Word: maastricht
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...member of NATO, which is undergoing a post-cold war identity crisis, and the E.C., which is trying to keep the Maastricht treaty from unraveling, Greece has extra leverage these days on both sides of the Atlantic. In the U.S. it has the additional help of the powerful Greek-American lobby...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...