In the Hands Of The People

By MARGOT HORNBLOWER COGNAC

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."

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.

Rural alienation runs deep. "They signed this complicated treaty without telling anyone," said Michel Forgeron, a Segonzac grape grower whose calloused hands and weathered face attest to a life outdoors. "Now we don't know where we are going." Until recently, he sold the spirits he distilled from 40 acres to Cognac's family firms. Now multinationals such as Seagram and Guinness have moved in: even Monnet's old company was once sold to Germans and then to Britons. "Decision makers in Toronto or Paris do not care whether we live or die," said Forgeron's wife Francine. "We are pawns on the chessboard."

In a last-minute panic before the referendum, the French government sent copies of Maastricht to all 38 million voters -- a maneuver that may have hurt as much as helped. "The text was incomprehensible," said Guy Bechon, 56, principal of Cognac's Jean Monnet High School. A stocky fellow with a doctorate in physics, he nonetheless voted for the treaty "because I did not want my children to face a future of isolationism. Perhaps we must lose a little of our originality in order to progress." But Bechon would not go so far as Monnet, who hoped that transcending nationalism would "liberate Europe from its past." In making up his mind, Bechon kept mulling over memories that the politicians would have him forget. "In Europe we have a history that lives on in our gut," he said. "As a child, I remember cowering as the Germans goose-stepped by me. Never a day passed that my grandfather did not mention World War I. Today in Sarajevo it seems to be a replay."

In France the Maastricht referendum has unleashed a wave of fear over German domination that has been building ever since unification swelled the size and wealth of its rich neighbor. Britain, roused to resentment by the Bundesbank's indifference to the disruptive effects of the high interest rates, felt it had no choice but to take the pound out of the European monetary system two weeks ago.

But the German issue cuts both ways. Politicians such as former Prime Minister Michel Rocard call Maastricht a way to harness the "German demons." Folding Germany into Western Europe's strong embrace, the argument goes, will prevent it from turning eastward to build a new economic empire around the former Soviet satellites. On the other hand, a growing number of Frenchmen find the intimacy prescribed by Maastricht too close for comfort. "France has been a sovereign nation for 1,000 years," said Cognac Mayor Francis Hardy. "We have suffered too much in three wars with Germany to melt into one federal agglomeration."

Half an hour south of Cognac, Pierre-Remy Houssin, a National Assembly Deputy, welcomed 49 Bavarians last week to "a Musical Encounter" in his village of Baignes. The Germans, from Baignes' sister city of Dietramszell, near Munich, brought three kegs of beer and played brassy tunes, while the French choir chimed in with Mozart and Bach. Houssin told the Germans that he opposes Maastricht. "The best way to fall down stairs is to run up four steps at a time," he joked. But the Bavarians hardly seemed to mind. "Maastricht is a bad program," said Hans Gams, 21, a farmworker. "We are fighting for our existence, given the low prices for milk and meat."

In the end, divisive as it was, the French referendum has served a purpose: whatever Europe emerges from the turmoil will have been strengthened by an invigorating democratic debate. "We will be listening more to the people," said Pierre Beregovoy, France's Prime Minister. In Cognac, the "real people" might have told him long ago that the dream of a United States of Europe would have to bide its time, like a bracing brandy that takes decades to meld the flavors of many vineyards.

With reporting by James O. Jackson/Aachen