EUROPE'S DREAM DEFERRED

In the Gare de l'Est, one of the elegant old train stations of Paris, there are reminders of why the European Union was created. They are the plaques commemorating the dead. Today tourists coming from Germany and points east take little notice of the inscriptions that call on them to remember the thousands of French who left this station for the "torture and death camps" of Nazi Germany in World War II, and the "70,000 Jews, among them 11,000 children," who were sent to their extermination. Then Europe's borders were lines of death. Today they barely seem to exist. The trains do not stop at the frontier. Nobody asks for the papers of the passengers onboard. Tourists, business people, commuters and students buy their tickets with the same euro currency in Paris they would use in Berlin or Rome or Madrid. Asked what those plaques might have to do with the current vision of a single European Union, 18-year-old Jean Mayant says, "I don't see any relationship. Those are from ancient times."

Max Kohnstamm, 91, one of the founding fathers of what has become the European Union, remembers when all the bitter memories were still fresh. "There was an enormously strong feeling after 1945: 'This cannot happen again'," he said from his home in Belgium's Ardennes forest. And for 60 years that sentiment helped drive Europe toward ever-closer cooperation and unity. But last week it was suddenly obvious that as the bad old memories have faded, no clear vision of the future has taken their place. In two stunning votes, first in France, then in the Netherlands, citizens massively rejected ratification of a European constitution that required approval by all 25 member states. After five decades' moving toward a more complete Union, the European experiment has been plunged into serious confusion.

The consequences are important not only for the people of Europe, but for the United States. Despite bitter disputes with France and Germany before the Iraq invasion in 2003, Washington has come to rely on the European Union over the last year as "a kind of lodestar," in Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's words, that inspires and attracts democratic movements from Ukraine to the Middle East. "Everybody has a stake in Europe," she said last week, adding in measured language: "We understand that this has been a difficult period and that there will be some period of reflection going forward, but we continue to hope for an outward-looking Europe, not an inward-looking one."

At European Union headquarters in Brussels, top politicians were shaken, even teary-eyed, as they groped for explanations. "The constitution was--is--we don't even know what tense to use when we talk about it," said one staffer. Newspaper headlines fueled a sense of panic: EUROPE IN TURMOIL, trumpeted the Financial Times; STATE OF SHOCK, proclaimed the Nouvel Observateur. The euro spiraled down to an eight-month low against the dollar, and Italy's Labor minister even raised the possibility his country would go back to using the lira. "We are seeing a return of economic nationalism," says French author and economic analyst Erik Izraelewicz. Many people want more protection for their farms and businesses. They are suspicious of immigrants, resentful of the countries that have recently joined the Union, fearful about the prospect that populous Muslim Turkey will someday be a member. "There is no longer the binding factor of 'peace,' which is now considered a given; there are no longer enemies to the east," says Izraelewicz. "It is an end of the Europe of the first 50 years. A new Europe must be built."

As the European Union moves from unconvincing damage control to finding a new way forward, few people agree on the solutions--or even the problem. "The 'no' forces said they were not against Europe, just against this Europe," says Ben Crum, a political scientist at the Free University of Amsterdam. "The problem is, it isn't clear what 'Europe' means. Some want a retreat, others want to move forward in a different direction. But I don't hear many people saying we should stay where we are."

On the one hand, there is what's been called "Core Europe," led by France and Germany, which cherishes a continent of protectionist social-welfare states. Then there's "New Europe," led by postindustrial Britain, which is determined to free up European economies to better meet the challenge of emerging powers like China and India. When the European Union was enlarged by 10 members a year ago, taking its population to 450 million and giving it a combined GDP slightly larger than that of the United States, the old core countries felt threatened. France and Germany, with unemployment stuck around 10 percent and pension systems sinking deeply into debt, are ill equipped to address the problem of massive immigration and the competition of cheaper labor. Nor are the richer countries, with stalled economies, happy about paying subsidies to the poorer ones, which are growing faster.