Late in life, Jean Monnet, a Cognac salesman who went on to become the architect of the Common Market, mused about his dream for a United States of Europe. He thought back to his birthplace in this brandy-making town of Southwest France, where the grapes ripen slowly in the September sun, then mellow for decades in oaken barrels beneath the limestone distilleries. "The great thing about making cognac," he said, "is that it teaches you above all to wait. Man proposes, but time and God and the seasons have to be on your side."
Four decades have passed since Monnet's bold proposal of a more perfect union began to take form. But last week the citizens of Cognac, and of towns and cities across the European Community, signaled that they want to wait even longer -- perhaps forever -- before joining a federalist monetary and political structure.
The grand reasons why European integration makes sense are still there. But try telling that to angry, suspicious citizens, whose object of ire is the virtually unreadable Maastricht treaty, negotiated last December by the 12 nations of the European Community, which lays out a complex blueprint for the greater economic and political union of the Continent -- a plan that would take Europe far beyond the free-trade zone that goes into effect in January, to a single currency and common foreign and defense policies. The Danes' + refusal to approve Maastricht last June ignited simmering popular resentment, and France's razor-thin ratification proved just how deep public anxiety runs. The grass-roots revolt has redefined European politics, crossing the traditional left-right cleavages with new fault lines between poor and prosperous, rural and urban, nationalist and Europeanist. The Establishment seems stunned. "Either Europe will become more democratic," acknowledged E.C. President Jacques Delors, whose organization has its headquarters in Brussels, "or Europe will be no more."
North of the Franco-German border, Charlemagne's bones rest in the gilded tomb of Aachen's cathedral. The community's 12-star flag flutters from public buildings in a town that was briefly, in the 9th century, the capital of a Holy Roman Empire that united Europe from Brittany to Bohemia. But today, as Germans' once overwhelming support for Maastricht ebbs, flower seller Barbel Krutt speaks for Aachen's townspeople: "You can send all the politicians to the moon: this treaty does not mean a thing to folks like us."
In Britain an impassioned parliamentary debate last week revealed the public's deep unease about the agreement in the wake of a devaluation of the pound that has shaken the government's economic policies. "Maastricht does not create a superstate," said Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd. "But the feeling among Europe's people -- the real people -- is that it does."