"The Union shall have competence to define and implement a common foreign and security policy, including the progressive framing of a common defense policy."

One of the main reasons it's taken so long to create a common security policy is that the citizens of Europe do not think of themselves as Europeans first. No one has ever died to defend "Europe." They have died defending Britain or France or Germany. Some Euro-enthusiasts think that defense and foreign affairs -- security -- may be the best way to forge a common identity (although evidence for that point of view is hard to come by).

Like so many aspects of the European project, progress is step by very slow step. Today, soldiers from European countries are deployed in a number of global hot spots, under several different security organizations' umbrellas. But when people speak of a European defense entity they are speaking of the Eurocorps set up in 1992 by the leaders of those two old antagonists Germany and France. The pair has since been joined by Spain, Belgium and Luxembourg. In the decade since the five came together, the idea of a European army has not captured the public imagination.

The Eurocorps is headquartered in the Aubert de Vincelles barracks on the outskirts of Strasbourg, home of the European Parliament. The Aubert de Vincelles was originally built by the Germans in 1912 and then captured by the French during World War I.

Colonel Philippe Toussaint explains that today, despite the fact that Britain is not part of the force, the 1,000 men and women of the Eurocorps work under orders spoken in English. It seems remarkable, but then English today is the common language that Latin once was when these countries were part of the Roman Empire .

While English provides a common language in which to do business, also needed is a harmonized military procurement system. Each nation contributes weaponry and soldiers from one country have to retrain to fire guns provided by another country.

(AP) Euro currency and coins.

It is hard to overcome skepticism about this. The Eurocorps was conceived as a political gesture as much as a strategic one. Besides the European nations have a track record on foreign and security policy and it is not good. Bosnia was the test case and they failed miserably.

The failure to prevent the violent break-up of former Yugoslavia was a turning point in the development of a common foreign and defense policy according to Nicole Gnesotto, of the E.U.'s Institute for Security Studies in Paris. The leaders of the European nations were determined something like Bosnia would never happen again. "It was the beginning of a common E.U. foreign policy," Gnesotto explains. "It's absurd to think that in 2005 there is a French policy or a British policy on the Balkans, we have one European foreign policy and one defense policy since Europe now has taken the lead with military troops in Bosnia."

The seed of Europe's Common Foreign and Security Policy wasn't planted until 1998, just before the Kosovo war. Britain and France have Europe's largest militaries, and at a summit British Prime Minister Tony Blair and French President Jacques Chirac agreed to build an autonomous security policy outside the boundaries of NATO. Tiptoeing away from NATO was a European acknowledgement that the Cold War was definitely over and its relationship to its protector, the United States, must inevitably change, according to Nicole Gnesotto, because depending on which side of the Atlantic you are standing on, the dangers of the world look very different. "It's very difficult to say, where is the common threat?"

In many parts of the E.U. the common threat today is perceived as internal . After centuries of exporting people to its colonies, Europe has like the United States become a place of immigration. Most of the migrants are not white. It is a huge adjustment, one that the new constitution seeks to address:

"The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities."

But when most of your minorities come from Islamic countries, minority rights are a hard sell post 9/11. Even in the ultra-rationalist, notoriously tolerant Netherlands, people are not feeling particularly liberal about minorities.

(AP) Theo van Gogh, Dutch filmmaker.

The murder in November 2004 of controversial filmmaker Theo van Gogh has sent many in Holland into a mild state of panic. Hans Jansen, translator of the Koran into Dutch, says the Muslim immigrants are fundamentally different than other foreigners who have come to the Netherlands over the centuries."They do not want to join our polity," he claims. "They believe in the superiority of their religion and they don't want to assimilate."

In the Netherlands today, the most studied citizen is "they." "They" do this, "they" do that, "they" won't integrate, and "they" won't learn Dutch. "They" is a default setting in Dutch conversation. There are 16 million people in the Netherlands, non-white immigrants make up around nine percent of the population and around half of those people are Muslims. Beyond that, statistics are hard to come by, but here is one observable fact about integration in Amsterdam: The mayor is named Cohen and the deputy mayor is named Abu Taleb.

In Rotterdam, the main port city of the Netherlands, a populist party called Leefbar Rotterdam has come to power on the concerns many native Dutch people have about being overwhelmed by Muslim immigration.

At a New Year's party for the district council in the Feyenoord neighborhood, Leefbar councilor Marco Pastors says that his party has restored the Dutch component to this annual get together. "This party used to have only immigrant cookies and immigrant music ... and no drinks," he explains. "Now it has Dutch music. I like this very much."

Earlier in the evening, Marco Pastors had been chatting amiably with a couple of young Muslim women. One of them, Mashur, told me her family's history in the Netherlands. It is slightly at variance from the view of Hans Jansen and Marco Pastors with their claims that Muslim immigrants refuse to integrate. Mashur, born in a small village in Turkey, came to Rotterdam when she was young. Her parents were allowed into the country as guest workers, doing the dirty jobs no Dutch person would do. Her parents would have been happy to integrate and learn the Dutch language when they arrived. But all the society wanted from them was their labor and the government did not provide classes in Dutch. She also has a question for Leefbar's supporters. "What is a European person? I dress western but in my heart I am a Muslim and, by the way, I'm married with a Dutch boy."

To an outsider, the immigration crisis in the Netherlands at first seems a little overblown, but the more time you spend in the country the more you can understand why people are concerned. One school I visited in Rotterdam, a confessional school of the Dutch Reformed Church, had no immigrant pupils ten years ago.Today only five percent of the students are native born Dutch and more than a third of the pupils in this church school are Muslims. It is the speed of population change that is behind the general fear in much of the Netherlands.

USEFUL LINKS: • Eurocorps • Common Foreign & Security Policy CONTINUE: Part One | Part Two | Part Three