BANKERS, bureaucrats and politicians are still assessing the damage done to their dream of a European super-state after the failure of June's Amsterdam summit.
No sooner had the fudged documents been adopted and selfcongratulatory communiqués issued than the real scale of the problem began to surface.
One top German banker has attacked the Amsterdam Treaty as a "ragbag" and "patchwork" of decisions which do nothing to tackle the "lopsided construction" of moves towards a single currency.
The drive towards greater political integration, and the reform of the EU's decision-making institutions which are vital if it is to open its doors to up to 10 new countries in eastern Europe, came to a grinding halt.
Instead new divisions have begun to emerge, under pressure of mass resistance to the austerity programmes forced on by the convergence criteria for the single currency.
Austerity
The Euro marches may have been kept well away from the summit meeting, but each national delegation was painfully aware of the growing mood of opposition to austerity that has taken various forms across the continent.
So great are the tensions as national governments attempt to defend their own interests at the expense of their previous commitment to the development of the EU that some analysts talking already of a process of "disintegration".
Ironically it was one of the keenest previous advocates of greater integration, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who helped stamp on the brakes, even while he struggled to salvage his hopes for a single European currency.
Amsterdam saw the first substantial break in the crucial Franco-German axis that for 10-15 years has been the driving force towards the strengthening and expansion of the EU, and more recently in pressing for progress towards a single currency.
This liaison was rudely interrupted in both countries in the last 12 months, by a wave of opposition in Germany involving workers' protests and increasingly outspoken criticism by conservative financiers worried at the potential weakening of stability if the Deutschmark is dissolved into the euro, and in France by the mass strikes against austerity, leading to the shock defeat of the right wing government by a Socialist Party critical of the Maastricht Treaty.
Although France's new Socialist Prime Minister Jospin met Kohl as usual before the Amsterdam proceedings, for the first time they failed to agree a common line, with both governments feeling the heat of popular opinion at home.
Jospin clung formally to his electoral stance of demanding the Stability Pact agreed in Dublin last December be renegotiated to include a specific commitment to growth and job creation.
Kohl for his part opposed any measures which would lead to state spending on job creation, and attempted to undo the political damage caused by his government's CHES Haunting the bourgeoisie: growing popular opposition to EMU public row with the Bundesbank over financial juggling tricks to ensure Germany meets the Maastricht convergence criteria for a single Cadency.
In the summit itself, under pressure from right wing President Chirac, and from the even more right wing Tony Blair, Jospin's rhetoric dissolved into a passive acceptance of a fudged formula renaming the Stability Pact as the Stability and Growth Pact.
This may have seemed easy enough at the time, but it will cut little ice with French workers, who are angry and threatening new action over the failure of Jospin or the EU to prevent the closure of Renault's Vilvoorde plant in Belgium, and impatient to see the promised package of job-creation policies implemented in France.
Since the summit Jospin has given a major speech to the National Assembly insisting that he will carry out all his election pledges, promising a reduction in the working week, and to limit the right of private employers to sack workers.
The latest French financial statistics also show a worsening budget deficit, making it even less likely that the country could meet the convergence criteria for the single currency: but it is already clear that the political priorities of the new government are being shaped more in response to domestic problems than by any overarching project of European Union.
Kohl for his part attempted to rei le Chomege, Essens !!! coup some lost prestige at home by taking a harder line on political integration, throwing his considerable weight against moves towards majority voting in sensitive areas including asylum policy.
It was under these conditions of growing national preoccupations and tensions that Tony Blair was ticks down towards the deadline for convergence" able to achieve his self-proclaimed "successes" - retaining border controls in Britain and Ireland, blocking moves towards a military union, and claimed progress on the confused problem of fishing quotas.
The result was that a stalemate has developed over the single currency while France, Germany, Italy and Greece wrestle with intractable deficits as the clock ticks down towards the deadline for convergence. The EU has if anything rolled backwards from its political objectives.
The Amsterdam Treaty is described by the Financial Times as "more like a party political manifesto than a hallowed constitutional document": The usual suspects: Amsterdam saw Europe's political leaders facing in different directions "The Austrians and the British talked up new clauses on animal welfare; the Belgians praised a declaration on local sports teams; the French and Spanish inserted a new language on remote regions; and everyone praised a new employ. ment chapter, which is long on exhortation but acknowledges that national governments rather than Brussels should take the initiative."
Indeed the British government's most popular export during the summit was the Thatcherite policy of deregulation and "flexibility" of labour it inherited from the last 18 years.
The employment and growth pact pledges EU member states to review their tax and benefit systems to get rid of disincentives to job creation, increase the "adaptability" of labour markets, and increase the "employability" of their workforce through training programmmics.
Platitudes
The policy was lifted wholesale from the New Labour platitudes of Tony Blair's manifesto and Gordon Brown's budget, and is of course a recipe for the spread of British-style low-wage, insecure and part-time working throughout the continent.
Worse, agreement around these vague and evasive phrases was sufficient to pull in the French and Swedish governments which had been the most outspoken critics of the Maastricht Treaty, and thus keep the wheels on European Monetary Union, even if the gearbox is jammed.
"You could say we have rescued EMU," a minister told the FT, "although I would be grateful if you did not say it too loudly."
Gordon Brown was a bit more up-front on the EMU question when he pointed out that his Budget would enable the British economy to meet the Maastricht convergence criteria.
Blair's team has always seemed likely to look with greater enthusiasm than the Tories on the single currency.
But the lasting impact of Amsterdam is likely to centre on its political failures, and on the emergence of popular pressures within member states as a factor in policy debates, obstructing any real prospect for enlargement to the East or greater political integration.
With key governments singing not only in different languages but from counterposed hymn sheets, the chances of any leading member state taking the political gamble of monetary union must be reduced.
A senior member of the Bundesbank's governing central council, Reimut Jochimsen, spelled out the problems facing Helmut Kohl when at the end of June he warned that to launch EMU on inadequate economic and political foundations "may lead to the disaster of political disintegration".
Pointing to the French government's admission that it cannot get its public deficit down to the 3% Maastricht maximum, Mr Jochimsen warned that Germany too will find it hard, and it could be "almost impossible" to meet the additional criterion of cutting the public debt to 60% of GDP.
To wriggle round this (and similar problems in other countries) by creative accountancy, he warned, would "build EMU on very shaky foundations". Such "pure political opportunism" would risk "a serious crisis of confidence".
Resistance
The antics of Europe's political leaders are a visible result of the growing international resistance to austerity. That fight is likely to grow as the squeeze on welfare spending and drive for speed-up is intensified by employers.
Despite Tony Blair's cynical hi-jacking of the phrase "People's Europe", originally raised by campaigners opposed to the Maastricht criteria and the project of a capitalist super-state controlled by bankers, big business and bureaucrats, it is clear that there is a yawning gulf between the fudge and phrases of Amsterdam and the needs of Europe's workers and 20 million unemployed.
The links forged in the Euro march campaign can be a crucial building block for a genuine internationalist fightback, strengthened by the obvious signs of weakness from many European governments.