Even as many European nations recoil from the obligations of economic union (because neither borrowers nor lenders are very happy these days), a radical cross-border European politics is being born.

Ironically, the founding document of a genuinely pan-European politics isn’t one that unites the continent. To the contrary, the fiscal compact that German Chancellor Angela Merkel persuaded her European Union colleagues to embrace — with an assist from French President Nicolas Sarkozy — has given rise to bitter dissents both within and among European nations. The pact, which codifies fiscal constraints that will inflict years of economic stagnation, if not accelerated decline, on such debtor nations as Spain and Greece, has divided Europe into rival camps — the Keynesian leftists against the austerity rightists.

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