Global Policy Forum

By Roger Cohen

Berlin, Jan. 13 -- Deriding the bureaucracy, the bungling and the banana wars of the European Union has long been a pastime on this fractious Continent. But abruptly a serious sense of European citizenship, along with the rights that go with it, seems to be laying the basis of a supranational identity here.

It is still early, and nobody is suggesting that France has suddenly been expunged from the heart of the Frenchman. But the advent of a common currency in the euro, the realization with the conflict in the Balkans that a Europe of trade is not enough, and the widening appreciation of a body of European law that takes precedence over national legislation seem to be spurring a new consciousness.

"There has been a qualitative jump in the sense of European identity," said Karl Kaiser, a German expert on international affairs. "What you are seeing are the first signs of shared beliefs, rights and responsibilities among young Europeans no longer ready to sit passively as America protects them or as the Union grows."

One area where the nation-state seems to be losing ground particularly fast to the idea of a united Europe is that of the law. This was evident in recent days as European court verdicts obliged Germany and Britain to reconsider or revise basic military policy. And the mere existence of a European Court of Human Rights led Turkey, an aspiring member of the European Union, where the death penalty is banned, to postpone the execution of Abdullah Ocalan, the Kurdish rebel leader.

For some time, treaties have enshrined the pre-eminence of European law over national legislation in many areas, including the environment, trade, human rights and working conditions. But it has taken a long time for this reality to reach ordinary citizens in Madrid or Munich. Europe was more often seen as the source of regulations that encumbered lives than of laws that could be liberating.

Now, however, the power of pan-European courts is being brought home. "It was an absolute discovery, and a very good discovery, the existence of this European court," said Tanja Kreil, the 23-year-old German woman whose campaign to be allowed to bear arms in the German Army was upheld by the European Court of Justice this week. "I used to think of myself as German. Now I feel a little European, too."

Ms. Kreil brought her case to a Hanover court in 1996. An electrical engineer, she had been rejected by the army because of Germany's constitutional ban on women's bearing arms, though women had been allowed to serve in medical and musical units. The Hanover court ultimately referred the case to the European Court of Justice.

This court, based in Luxembourg, and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg are quite distinct. The former deals with the 15 member states of the European Union, the latter with the 41 states that signed European Convention on Human Rights. But they share a fast-rising number of cases.

"Our workload has increased by 75 percent since 1997, and high-profile cases such that of Ocalan will accelerate this trend," said Roderick Liddell, a spokesman for the European Court of Human Rights, whose jurisdiction covers a population of 800 million people. "The increase reflects a growing consciousness of human rights and growing awareness that redress may be sought beyond the nation-state at European level."

It was a ruling in September by the Court of Human Rights that led Britain this week to end its ban on openly gay men and women as members of the armed forces.

At the European Court of Justice, whose jurisdiction is the 376 million citizens of the European Union, judges and lawyers are similarly swamped, with the number of cases growing by more than 10 percent a year and over 1,000 cases pending. Unwieldy translation requirements slow proceedings.

The court enforces the Union's treaties -- trying to ensure the absence of discrimination in institutions like the German Army, ruling on the freedom of European citizens to seek jobs wherever they wish among the member states, enforcing environmental laws like emission requirements or regulations on the disposal of nuclear waste.

Long perceived as distant or impenetrable, this court is now coming closer to ordinary people. "We used to be associated with abstruse things like fishing quotas," said Fionnuala Connolly, an official at the court. "But increasingly European citizens see that this is a place where they can uphold their rights."

In a sense, this development is a natural extension of the European idea. The lure of the European Union, for many nations, has always lain in the assurance membership offered of the rule of law. Countries emerging from dictatorship -- including Greece, Spain and Portugal -- founded their modern identity in part on the stability the Union provided.

A similar lure is still at work -- prodding countries like Hungary and Romania to settle old territorial disputes in preparation for membership, or Turkey to improve its human-rights record in a bid to enter the club. But while the framework of the rule of law has clearly had critical political repercussions, and has made the European Union a beacon throughout the Continent, the growth of a supranational European identity based on European laws within the Union has been much slower.

"It is in the area of law that European states have made some of the most critical concessions of sovereignty and people are only now becoming aware of this," said Ezra Suleiman, a Princeton University expert on the European Union. "The political implications are incredible, because Europe seems bound to shift slowly from the project of an elite to more of a grass-roots thing."

Of course, national governments are not always pleased by this growing influence of European law. France, for domestic political reasons, has recently defied a European court order that it lift its ban on the sale of British beef.

The legal developments reflecting a new European identity are not happening in isolation. The war in Kosovo provoked a widespread European outrage that in turn spurred a new European patriotism. It is only nascent, but for the first time since World War II there is a sense of European responsibility for the security of the Continent.

European leaders have already resolved to change European treaties in order to merge Europe's ineffective security arm, the West European Union, with the European Union itself. Plans to develop a European military force that is "separable but not separate" from NATO, in the words of Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping of Germany, are being pushed forward vigorously.

At the same time, the introduction of the euro -- despite its relative weakness -- has certainly encouraged people to see themselves more as Europeans, a trend likely to accelerate when the currency begins to circulate two years from now.

All these developments will test relations with American governments used to a Europe that, in Henry A. Kissinger's phrase, had no telephone number. Exasperation in Washington with European weakness could give way to irritation at a new European assertiveness if European identity really takes root.

"The United States got used to an alliance with an enormous disparity of power," Mr. Kaiser said. "There was America and a large number of smaller, sometimes divided allies. Now those allies are combining, and on many issues they have the same opinion. For Washington to adapt to this is already visibly difficult."