Some of those most closely involved in the 1991 treaty negotiations - above all, Mr Santer's predecessor, the French Socialist Jacques Delors - now confess that it was a mistake not to have tackled the issue of employment at Maastricht.EU leaders, already worried that Europe's economic difficulties may force a postponement of the Euro's planned launch in January 1999, accept that public support for monetary union is essential if the project is to succeed. This fear is not justified," Jacques Santer, the president of the Commission, told the European Parliament last Wednesday.Hans Tietmeyer, the chairman of Germany's powerful central bank, the Bundesbank, observes that unemployment is "mainly a structural problem" - that is, a problem requiring more flexible labour markets, reforms of the welfare state and the removal of what he calls "disincentives to work". A businessman-farmer aged 61, he runs 900 acres of prime land - complete with 2,400 hogs, cattle, crops of corn and beans, plus a profitable little enterprise on the side selling seed - with his two sturdy sons, Todd and Dan. "The fear of unemployment is sapping confidence in the single currency. She called last Friday for changes to the Maastricht treaty so that the EU can concentrate harder on creating jobs.One commonly heard argument is that Maastricht is forcing governments into a deflationary policy of budget deficit reduction at just the moment when the European economy needs a dose of expansion to return people to work. Worse still, it is said, once the single currency is in circulation, national governments will be restricted in their ability to reduce unemployment because they will no longer control exchange rate and monetary policy and will be barred from running occasionally large budget deficits to prime their economies.One of the few available ways of getting out of a recession in the era of the Euro, as the single currency was christened last December, would be to cut labour costs. This could mean lower wages or slimmer welfare, social security and holiday entitlements.It is a source of immense frustration to the EU that such ideas have taken hold of the public imagination even though many economists question their validity.
What unites most EU governments - Britain's Tory administration predictably apart - is the worry that more and more people are drawing a connection between unemployment and the politically sacrosanct ideal of ever closer European union.Job-conscious Europeans are asking if the Maastricht treaty's strict conditions for countries preparing for monetary union are helping to entrench unemployment rather than reduce it."If we cannot curb unemployment, the whole European process is in danger," said Monika Wulf-Mathies, the German member of the European Commission responsible for regional policy. But overall the EU's record on jobs compares unfavourably with those of the United States, Japan and non-EU European countries such as Norway and Switzerland. Almost 18 million people, or 10.6 per cent of the workforce, are unemployed in the EU's 15 member-states, and in Germany, where 4 million people are out of work, the jobless numbers have reached levels last seen in Hitler's time.Obviously, the picture varies from country to country: the Spanish jobless rate of almost 23 per cent is far worse than the Dutch rate of 7 per cent. The centre-left Belgian government said last Thursday it would hold talks with employers and unions on 12 February on "an ambitious contract for jobs".There has been no comparable flurry of activity in the EU since its foundation in 1957, but then the scale of the problem is unique, too.
"Serious efforts across Europe to fight unemployment are needed to make European integration acceptable for the average citizen," said Antonio Guterres, Portugal's recently elected Socialist Prime Minister. From the opposite end of the political spectrum, France's Gaullist Prime Minister, AlainJuppe, added: "We have a common obsession - jobs."Germany's centre-right coalition government has set itself the formidable task of halving unemployment by 2000, and in Sweden the Social Democratic Finance Minister and prime minister-in-waiting, Goran Persson, has outlined the same objective. And I'll say this: it doesn't make a whole lot of difference whether they're Republicans or Democrats It really doesn't People just don't believe them, any of them.". ALL OVER Europe, the cry is going up: create more jobs! Terrified that public opinion is increasingly blaming high unemployment on the European Union's plan to launch a single currency in 1999, EU leaders are searching urgently for ways to put people back to work. But he says he'll be amazed if more than 80 turn up.The same pattern of uninterest and disdain may extend to the November election itself. Some Dickinson County residents said that, having considered it a duty all their lives to vote, they were considering abstaining this time around.
If people such as these - blessed with even tempers, uncluttered minds and high quality of life - are thinking this way, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the American political system as a whole is experiencing a creeping crisis of confidence.Especially when a man like Dean Hummel, a die-hard conservative partisan all his life, ventures a thought like this one: "There was an 11th commandment: 'Thou shalt not say bad things about other Republicans.' Well, that's changed People don't care much about the politicians any more They don't care. And there can't be 10 per cent of that money that doesn't come with strings attached ... So, yes, the dollars: that is the issue."It is not an issue which the politicians have shown much interest in addressing Perhaps because they have failed to pick up the signals. Rick Ayers, the county chairman of the Republican Party, said that head office had warned him to prepare for a turn-out of 600 to 800 for the caucus polls in eight days' time.
Why?"There's been a growing dissatisfaction since the advent of TV and all the negative advertising It's money that's made politics the way it is. You would hope the politician would listen more to the 240 million people who don't contribute to their campaign... But they don't."It's ugly but no one's come up with a better system and what it means is that an awful lot of good people don't want to run because they have to spend most of their time raising money. He has found most people not merely undecided as to which candidate to pick, but uninterested, disappointed with the political game.
