PARIS -- The latest EU crisis could be one of the worst the European Union has known, and nobody can say if, when and how it will be overcome.

"The war of wars, the fight of fights, is between France and England . . . all the rest are episodes." These words were written in 1833 by Jules Michelet, a man often considered the greatest French historian of all time. He was fundamentally a romantic, in love with France, which he described as a "person." All other nations were, according to him, "animals."

The fact is that from the Hundred Years War (1337-1453) to Napoleon's second abdication, in 1815, France and England have waged an incredible number of wars. France, like most of the continental powers, wanted to dominate Europe, which during these centuries was -- due to the discovery of America and the conquest of sub-Saharan Africa -- the very center of human history.

Although Britain had once nourished the same ambition itself, it subsequently decided that it was enough to prevent the other powers from establishing hegemony over the European continent. So it revived the ancient Roman art of "divide and rule" and sought to build the world's largest navy.

French President Charles de Gaulle was a great admirer of Britain and of Prime Minister Winston Churchill, without whom he could not have written the epic of the Free French. But he was at the same time quite jealous of the British and was not far from sharing Michelet's judgment of other nations.

France, in De Gaulle's eyes, was a "Goddess of the tales," and he once told a British ambassador in Paris that "our two countries have always been at war, except when they were allied against a common enemy." He never forgot Britain's attempts at the end of World War II to push the French out of Syria. Above all else, he never forgot Churchill's warning on the eve of the Normandy invasion: "Each time we must choose between Europe and the open sea, we shall always choose the open sea," meaning Britain would do anything in the future to maintain its alliance with the United States.

With the exception of the pitiful Suez expedition of 1956, succeeding governments in London have always followed that line. And there lies the reason behind most of the tensions between Paris and London over the last 60 years.

This fact accounts for the 1954 rejection by the French Parliament of the draft European army advocated by Churchill (and heavily backed by the White House), as well as for de Gaulle's veto, twice, of Britain's application to join the European Economic Community. The general wanted a "European Europe" and feared that Britain, if admitted, would act as a "Trojan Horse" on behalf of American interests.

Things changed after De Gaulle's resignation in 1969. His successor, Georges Pompidou, allowed Britain to join the EEC in 1973, essentially because he feared the rise of Germany and sought to balance Bonn's growing power by forming better relations with Britain, the Soviet Union and the U.S.

The British prime minister at the time, Conservative Edward Heath, also believed in the need for a more united Europe. Heath's ambassador to France once told me: "At the beginning we didn't believe in this European thing. Then we started to be worried, and tried to destroy it from outside with our free-exchange-zone project. Later we tried to join it, to better fight it. But now we're entering the community with a strong determination to help its success."

I don't doubt his sincerity, but a great number Britons didn't share his view. They were proud of their country's nine centuries of resistance to renewed invasion attempts, wanted to remain independent and didn't see what benefits joining the EEC would bring them. They were shocked at the idea that Britain could be reduced to a status similar to that of France, which had been defeated early on in World War II.

By the end of his presidency, Pompidou was quite disappointed with this British stance, not hesitating to say -- with some exaggeration -- that Heath was the only European in the United Kingdom.

The same couldn't certainly be said of Heath's successor, Margaret Thatcher, a determined fighter who hated the intimacy of the Franco-German couple and was anxious "to have her money back." She demanded a rebate from the EEC in return for Britain's support of its program of agricultural subsidies known as the Common Agricultural Policy.

She attained her goal in 1994, thanks to major difficulties the British economy was experiencing at the time. The rebate agreement has been renewed since despite the fact that Britain's economy recovered long ago.

Today, due to the enlargement of the European Union, additional funds are needed to narrow the gap between the EU's newest members' standards of living and those of the 15 older members. The object of the European summit on June 17-18 was to reach an agreement on how to raise such funds.

To reach a compromise on the EU budget for the 2007-2013 period, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has just begun a six-month term as president of the European Council, was asked by his predecessor, Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker -- with the backing of 24 governments, including France, Germany and Italy -- to renounce Britain's £3 billion rebate.

Blair bluntly refused to do so unless French President Jacques Chirac agreed to a reduction in the huge EU subsidies given to French farmers under CAP. "It simply doesn't make sense," Blair said, "in this new world for Europe to spend over 40 percent of its budget on the common agricultural policy, representing 5 percent of the EU population producing less than 2 percent of the EU's output."

Despite an offer by the EU's newest members to accept less aid than they were entitled to, and Chirac's criticism of Blair's "egoisms," Blair didn't budge. Buoyed by the French and Dutch rejections of the EU Constitution, Chirac's fall in French polls and the knowledge that German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder will likely to lose his next election, Blair apparently believes Providence has given him an opportunity to become the founder of the new century's Europe. So, on June 23, Blair went to the European Parliament and announced that Europe risked "failure, and failure on a grand strategic scale," if it failed to undertake significant reform.

Given the opposition to Blair's ambitious plans and demands, huge obstacles remain in the way of a budget agreement. Fortunately, however, the final decision on the budget need not be taken until next year. The fight will be hard, but a last-minute arrangement cannot be ruled out if Europe's leaders can overcome their selfishness and their pride.