Europe: An old-new divide

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: The dream of a United States of Europe arose from the ashes of World War II. It was hoped and believed that a European community of shared sovereignty would make another war on the continent impossible. The last 50 years or so have seen enormous progress toward European unification, but the events of last weekend show that much work remains to be done.
A meeting of the leaders of 25 present and imminent members of the European Union collapsed over the failure to reach agreement on apportioning voting power among small and large states. The hang-up was a proposal to discard a 3-year-old voting system that gives relatively small EU members such as Spain almost as much voting weight as big countries such as Germany.
Countries like Spain and Poland (which joins the EU next year) naturally want to retain the expanded voting rights; Germany and France, meanwhile, seek a system in which all future EU laws would be passed by a simple majority of the 25 countries -- provided they represented at least 60 percent of the people in the EU.
This is a problem negotiators in Europe ought to be able to work out, since it is neither unique nor intractable. In America, less populous states such as Wyoming and North Dakota have as much representation in the Senate as more populous states such as California and New York, but not as much in the House of Representatives.
There are answers
There is no obvious reason the EU could not establish a bicameral structure of some sort. Or it could adopt a formula by which only certain questions would be decided by a simple majority of all members. There are many other possibilities.
The path not to take is one that leads to deeper divisions within the alliance. In the aftermath of the weekend collapse, such a regressive move was proposed by French President Jacques Chirac. He said smaller groups -- he called them "pioneers" -- of the EU's six founding members could coalesce around areas of common agreement.
The disagreement over voting apportionment highlighted fissures between "old" and "new" Europe, and the French proposal, would only deepen these divisions and set back the drive for unity.
Over the last half-century, the lowering of trade and other barriers in Europe has eliminated market inefficiencies and promoted peace and prosperity on the continent. Given the many economic, political and other links between the United States and Europe, it is in America's interest to promote the smooth, orderly integration of Europe.