The importance of the Danish vote comes in its power as a warning against Euro-elitism, as a rejection of blindly going ahead with the grand project of economic and political unification without a readily defined -- and explained -- sense of how and why. There is a very real feeling of jitteriness around Europe as political and business leaders wonder what the euro will do next, but taking a step back, it's easy to argue that the euro zone has been a clear-cut success.

First of all, it has accomplished what many had deemed impossible: It gave Germany a way back into Europe, in the most sweeping sense. "It is often overlooked how successful the EU has been in establishing itself over relatively few decades," noted Andrew Stroehlein, editor in chief of Central Europe Review, in a recent piece on the Danish vote. "Following a century of disastrous 'big ideas' in Europe, it's quite amazing how well the 'big idea' of the European project has caught on."

The once-mighty West German economy has been humbled in the decade since reunification, but as German politicians were lining up to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of official reunification on Tuesday, the figures were generally encouraging for Europe's largest economy. It may take a generation for the former East to come into its own economically, but job growth and economic growth have both picked up in recent years. This trend has been helped of late by the weakness of the euro.

As the Times of London reported last week, a report from Cambridge Econometrics found that the currency's drop in value has arrested the trend that saw 800,000 jobs lost in the manufacturing sector in the countries of the euro zone from 1995 to 1998. That amounted to 1 percent of the manufacturing total. "Much of that loss has been recouped" since the launch of the euro, declared the Times. The United Kingdom's trends in manufacturing jobs, meanwhile, have moved in the opposite direction as it has so far resisted any temptation to link its economic fortunes with the countries of the euro zone.

The Danish rebuff actually adds urgency to the case for reducing government bureaucracies and modernizing economic policy in the lead European nations -- which will ultimately make further economic integration more attractive. There's simply nowhere else to go. Some retrenchment is likely. For example, the notoriously unaccountable Central European Bank -- far less accountable even than the U.S. Federal Reserve Board -- was a ripe target for euro-skeptic Danes, and some reform of that institution will now become a priority.

One explanation for why Americans continue to think of the decline in the euro's value as a symbol of European weakness may reside in the fact that U.S. stock analysts haven't caught up to changing European realities. Just last Friday, financial analyst and bestselling author James B. Stewart scoffed at the idea that the euro is "as undervalued as European politicians would have us believe." According to his argument, investors look at Europe and just don't like what they see.

"When they look at Continental Europe, with its high tax rates, high unemployment, generous health and welfare benefits and socialist labor policies, perhaps they don't see such a competitive economy in the global marketplace," Stewart wrote.

But Stewart's analysis could easily have been written a decade or two ago. It looks suspiciously like the fudging of someone who isn't following current trends. European economies have a long way to go, but they are making hard decisions and they are moving away from that old-style European model Stewart ridicules. Major breakthroughs like tax reform in Germany are all but ignored in the United States, but they are part of a picture of dynamic, if incremental, change. Eventually the euro is bound to reflect that change.

"The idea that these economies are bad to invest in doesn't really hold water," says the Center for Economic and Policy Research's Dean Baker. "There is this stereotype of the U.S. having a vibrant economy and Europe as the stagnant, old-fashioned one. The numbers just don't show that. Productivity growth has been strong for the last couple years. It's getting pretty close to the United States. The idea that they are static, moribund economies just isn't supported by the evidence."

The main threat to the euro zone countries is not continued weakness for the euro, but actually the opposite -- a plummeting dollar, relative to the euro. Overall world economic growth this year is expected to reach as high as 4.7 percent, a figure spurred in large part by growth in Europe and Japan -- fed by exports to the United States. But if the euro suddenly starts to surge upward, those exports could decline again. Indeed, a strong euro could be an even more alarming prospect for Europeans than what they are faced with now. But not half as alarming as it should be for Americans -- because a strong euro could mean a crashing U.S. economy.

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