IN terms of its own objectives, the Dublin European Council has been deemed a success. But it offered much less than the New Deal for jobs which Europe needs to avoid throwing itself into the worst economic crisis since the 1930s.
On present trends, the project for a single currency could break rather than make Europe. The European Monetary Institute - forerunner of a European Central Bank has pronounced that only three member states are set to meet the conditions.
But if all 15 do so the implications are worse. The spending cuts to meet the 3 per cent budget deficit, and 60 per cent debt rules, could lose Europe another 12 million jobs.
Yet almost none of this is necessary. National parliaments already have amended the Maastricht Treaty to enable the EU - rather than member states - to borrow and invest on its own account. The instrument is the European Investment Fund in Luxembourg. The means are Union Bonds.
As Union borrowings, bonds issued by the fund should not count against the national debt of member states any more than US Treasury Bonds count against the debt of California or Delaware.
Provided the on lending by the fund is not to governments but to the actual users, this would not count on the national debt of member states. Not least since it as yet has no borrowings, the current debt base of the EU is zero.
The potential is striking. But so is the reality. Europe is imposing self inflicted austerity to achieve monetary union. Instead, by issuing its own bonds it could offset cuts in national spending, reduce unemployment and make it possible for most member states to join a single currency by 1999.
In turn, this would make enlargement feasible on a rapid enough schedule to avoid the power vacuum in central and eastern Europe.
This wider context is why the fund and Union Bonds were designed in the first place. It is why they featured as key means to achieve the 15 million jobs target in the 1993 Delors White Paper. Even the trans European transport, energy and communications networks in the White Paper are strikingly similar to the original New Deal programme.
So far they lack public co finance. Through bond issues, the fund could provide it.
The statutes of the fund already allow that it could borrow and invest 60 billion ecu, equivalent to three quarters of the Commission's total annual budget for the agricultural, regional, social and other funds. DG II the finance and economy directorate of the European Commission recommended investing as much over two years, in its Scenarios 2000 strategy paper of 1993, and claimed it would not be inflationary.
Had this been done already, more member states could have met the single currency criteria this year. More could be done in future by raising the fund's borrowing limit. The effect on interest rates should be broadly neutral, since upward pressure from the new bonds would be offset by lower national rates, as governments cut their borrowing to try to meet the Maastricht criteria.
The late President Mitterrand called three years ago for a 100 billion ecu fund.
At Cannes, finding that the Commission's own resources could not finance major jobs programmes, President Chirac called on the European Council to expand the Union's new financial instruments - the fund and its bonds.
Earlier this year the then Italian prime minister, Mr Lamberto Dini - now Foreign Minister - joined Commission President Jacques Santer in a further call to the European Council to issue the bonds.
The Minister for Finance, Mr Quinn, has advocated expanding borrowing through the fund to finance new investments and jobs. The Swedish government has grasped that Euro bond borrowing is vital to make real its proposal to the IGC for a European Employment Union.
So where is the problem? Issuing the bonds was on the agenda of the Florence European Council meeting in June and opposed only by Germany and the UK. The UK position could change next year. Germany's situation has already changed. It no longer is on trend to meet even the budget deficit benchmark for the euro. Nor has Chancellor Kohl been able to keep his promise to the nation to halve unemployment and reduce the unification tax.
There are real strains on the governing coalition, with the FDP concerned at loss of its political base if the tax is not cut soon.
Bound like Gulliver by so many constraints, can Dr Kohl not grasp that Europe needs its own New Deal and its own equivalent of UK Treasury Bonds to both deepen and widen the Union?
He showed political vision before when he overrode his finance minister and the Bundesbank on parity for the ostmark and the deutschmark. In so doing he united Germany. Will he now agree to issue the bonds and unite rather than disunite Europe through a single currency?