Newsweek: THE END OF THE EU - Will Europe Survive 2007?

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THE END OF THE EU-Will Europe Survive 2007? - by Denis MacShane

By rights, Europe should be celebrating. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the founding Treaty of Rome in 1957, and the European Union is on a roll. Its economy is outperforming the United States. Unemployment is falling. The Union's prosperous embrace has taken in post-communist Eastern Europe.

Impoverished countries such as Ireland, Portugal and Spain have become comfortably middle class while health care, free education, housing, clean water and decent roads can today be taken for granted by all.

Why, then, are Europeans so miserable? Instead of quaffing champagne and penning grateful eulogies to the founding fathers, they are moping. The latest Eurobarometer polls show the EU enjoys just 22 percent support in France, 24 percent in Britain and 28 percent in Germany. These downward trends to a large degree reflect a deficiency of leadership.

France's Jacques Chirac, Britain's Tony Blair and Germany's Gerhard Schröder spent more time squabbling than they did on making Europe work. Will that change in 2007 with a new generation of leaders? Not likely. Whoever wins this spring's French presidential election—Nicolas Sarkozy or Ségolène Royal—will join Chancellor Angela Merkel and Gordon Brown (presumed to succeed Blair this summer as prime minister) in a powerful Euro-skeptic triumvirate.