And nobody forgets that the French approved the Maastricht treaty by only a bee's whisker.
As junior finance minister from 1990 to 1993 he was instrumental in drafting the Maastricht Treaty.
The Maastricht Treaty (Article 121) fixed numerical targets for states seeking accession to the European Union.
The Maastricht treaty restricted the commission's role in foreign policy and in justice and home affairs.
None of this much concerned Mr Kohl at the time of the Maastricht treaty, however.
In theory, the Maastricht treaty gives an answer: the Western European Union, Europe's defence club.
Ad hoc gestures of flexibility notably, the opt-outs written into the Maastricht treaty will not suffice.
The model is the opt-out from the social chapter that John Major secured in the Maastricht treaty.
Such numbers might be too big even for the relatively generous wiggle-room offered in the Maastricht treaty.
In France a majority of those who voted for the Maastricht treaty would not do so again.
He may have voted against the Maastricht treaty, but so did many others in the party's mainstream.
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GDP, a deal higher than the 60% figure the Maastricht treaty deemed sustainable.
And the Maastricht treaty protects the euro by barring the European Central Bank from bailing out any national government.
It could be a rerun of the 1992 referendum on the Maastricht treaty.
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Still, the Maastricht treaty held, and its goal of a single currency was robust enough to survive several tricky moments.
The previous largest Tory rebellion over Europe was in 1993, when 41 MPs defied John Major on the Maastricht Treaty.
In 1992, it was the Danes and French that created fears over European treaties (with Danes voting against the Maastricht Treaty).
Merkel and her people have cited the unconstitutionality of eurobonds, noting they go against the Maastricht treaty and their own law.
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Mr Major accepted the Maastricht treaty five years later only after securing opt-outs from the single currency and the social chapter.
At the signing of the Maastricht treaty in 1992 the Germans in particular made it clear that their motivations were primarily political.
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Piet Dankert, then Europe minister, drafted a version of the Maastricht treaty that was too federalist even for Luxembourg (it was rejected).
In December 1991, the Maastricht Treaty called for a single European currency.
As her successor, John Major, fought Tory rebels over the Maastricht treaty, her disdain for increasing EU integration burned as brightly as ever.
Also, they need to adhere to the other strictures of the Maastricht treaty and not fall into the temptation of abandoning the Euro.
It says its impact will be far smaller than that of the 1992 referendum in which the Danes rejected the EU's Maastricht Treaty.
With this in mind, the Maastricht Treaty delineated what those limits are if a country wishes to be part of the Euro currency system.
The French government raised its estimate of its 2003 budget deficit from 2.6% to 2.8%, edging ever closer to the Maastricht treaty's 3.0% limit.
Like the countries already in the monetary union, Britain will have formally to pass the convergence tests set by the Maastricht treaty of 1992.
He said the ECB - and governments - needed to respect the spirit of the Maastricht treaty, which bans the ECB from financing national governments.
Mr Waigel's ineptness began with his insistence on the strictest application of the Maastricht treaty's budget criteria for joining the euro despite the treaty's flexible wording.
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