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Real people. Like the people of Cognac, where signs in five languages welcome visitors to "the City at the Heart of the World." It is no idle boast. Cognac (pop. 20,000) exports 95% of its brandy, $2 billion worth a year, west to musty men's clubs of Manhattan, and east to Japan, where businessmen buy it packaged in Baccarat crystal at $1,000 a bottle. The French drink less and less cognac. "We've been switching to whiskey ever since the Americans liberated us in '44," says Jean-Luc Lebuy, a Remy Martin executive. He voted for the treaty, he said, because "it is the only way for Europe to avoid being gobbled up by the Americans and the Japanese."
To Jacqueline Autef, whose tobacco shop is around the corner from Monnet's old house, such promises ring hollow. Once the most powerful nation in Europe, France may worry about its eclipse by Japan, the U.S. or Germany. Autef, 53, feels insecure on a more basic level. "I voted for Mitterrand in 1981 because he promised to reduce unemployment," said the tobacconist, who supports an ; invalid husband. "But today 3 million French are out of work. My neighbor committed suicide when he lost his job. Families are shattering." Whether stung by France's 10% jobless rate, by recession in Britain or by the costs of unification in Germany, voters are feeling the pinch -- and they are taking it out on Maastricht, the politicians' pet project. "Everyone is looking for scapegoats," says Cognac city councilor Jerome Mouhot. "Brussels is a convenient target."
Politicians have blamed unpopular measures, like agricultural reforms, on the bureaucrats. But a wholesale lapse in leadership throughout the Community allowed doubts and suspicions to take root. Political leaders galloped ahead, blithely drawing up plans without consulting the wishes, worries and hopes of the people. Last week a sizable portion made it clear they are not about to trade their national identity for something else without knowing why. "Maastricht has yet to be explained," acknowledged Portugal's President Mario Soares.
Ten miles south of Cognac's red-roofed mansions, the farmers of Segonzac explain why. MAASTRICHT: DANGER! proclaims a French Communist Party poster, but its hammer and sickle has been plastered over with the red-white-and-blue sticker of the far-right National Front, which appropriated the same slogan. The department of Charente, which includes the Cognac area, approved the treaty by a mere 13 votes out of 178,672 cast. Much of the opposition came from farmers. All rural France resented the agricultural-subsidy cutbacks initiated by Brussels, but even though they do not directly affect Charente grape growers, other regulations do. Brussels limits the amount of distilled wine they can sell according to volume rather than alcohol content, an unfair rule, they claim. And Big Brother even intrudes into their leisure time by restricting the hunting of migratory birds.