Quotes of the Day

It may not be quite the creation story of the U.S. — no Washington crossing the icy Delaware, no gathering of great minds to write a Constitution in Philadelphia — but the founding of what is now the European Union had drama of its own. There was Winston Churchill's 1946 speech in Zurich calling for a United States of Europe; the plan in 1950 by Robert Schuman, France's Foreign Minister, to pool European coal and steel — the muscle of war — under a multinational authority; the emotion at the signing of the Treaty of Rome, which established the European Economic Community, in 1957. On the bbc TV series The Poisoned Chalice a few years ago, an aide to Belgian Foreign Minister Paul-Henri Spaak recalled the mood: "Spaak turned to us and said: 'Do you think we have today been putting the first stone of a new Roman Empire, and this time without firing a shot?' We all felt like Romans that day."

Not many feel that way now. After a week in which voters in France and the Netherlands rejected a proposed constitution for the E.U., the hopes of its founders lie in tatters. Most E.U. business is numbingly dull. But, a bit like a coconut, its exterior dullness conceals hidden promise. The "European project" (as its fans call it) always had a political dimension. The Treaty of Rome committed its signatories to an "ever closer union," and for more than 30 years, most of those whose job it was to make the E.U. work hoped and believed that, one day, Europe would take its place in the world as a mighty, democratic, federal state.

That dream is now dead. Though there were many reasons for the votes against the constitution, it is not unreasonable to say that they had in common a fear of the future. Many modern Europeans see their comfortable world threatened by everything from Chinese competition to Polish plumbers to the prospect of Turkish neighbors, and given a chance to do so, cried out for change to stop.

It won't, of course, but as Europeans get used to the fact that their votes have not caused the stars to cease in their appointed path — those manufacturing jobs are still going to China — it is important that two pieces of conventional wisdom be reassessed. The first holds that the passion for a united Europe was always a creature of political élites — that it never had a reliable base of popular support among ordinary people, who (had they only been asked) were rather fond of their national customs and laws. To which the correct response is: Yes; and so what? It is perfectly true that the European project was always pushed forward by those most committed to it. But the E.U.'s founders displayed not the arrogance of élites, so much as leadership. Someone had to take the cracked vessel of Europe after 1945 and try to make it whole. A Europe in which age-old rivalries were sublimated in common institutions wasn't going to happen because of some airy expression of popular will, but because Schuman, Spaak and others made it so.

It is true, again, that after the fall of the Berlin Wall, nobody asked the people of Western Europe if they wanted to extend their wallets and good fortune to those in the east who had suffered the misery of communist rule. So? Granted, E.U. membership to the new democracies never had a seal of popular approval. That does not stop it being one of the great acts of political leadership of our time.

Second, it is widely assumed that — although nobody has been crass enough to say it — the Bush Administration must be secretly pleased at last week's votes. After all, Jacques Chirac, the nemesis of those who advocated war in Iraq, was humbled. And those American worrywarts who lay awake fearful that the E.U. might turn into a cohesive political rival to the U.S. can now sleep easy.

In truth, the referendums were bad news for Washington. From the Potomac, Europeans can seem maddening, condescending, ungrateful, self-absorbed, ostrichlike and frivolous. But Europe has two characteristics that are in notably short supply in the world: it is rich, and it is democratic. American policymakers know that they cannot do everything — right every wrong, face down every tyrant, raise up every person beaten low by poverty, clean up every environmental mess. The U.S. needs able and willing friends if it is to realize its goals. It now faces the prospect of a Europe whose political bandwidth will be absorbed by endless debates on the E.U.'s institutional structure. When the world needs the democracies to come together and expand the limits of liberty and prosperity, European leaders are likely to spend the next decade in ass-numbing paper shuffling. It is not what the Romans would have done; but then, after last week, who feels like a Roman?

• MICHAEL ELLIOT
• Michael Elliott on a shattered dream of empire