One of Labour's first acts was to opt in to the social chapter of the Maastricht treaty, a measure which cannot be reconciled with the idea of subsidiarity, or for that matter (given Europe's unemployment) with common sense.
Also, they need to adhere to the other strictures of the Maastricht treaty and not fall into the temptation of abandoning the Euro.
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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He said the ECB - and governments - needed to respect the spirit of the Maastricht treaty, which bans the ECB from financing national governments.
Majority voting may be extended in the revision of the Maastricht treaty supposed to be agreed on at the Amsterdam summit in June, but hostility from Britain and others will stop it going at all far.
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Like the countries already in the monetary union, Britain will have formally to pass the convergence tests set by the Maastricht treaty of 1992.
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.
Since Charles de Gaulle inaugurated the fifth republic in 1958, there have been eight referendums, ranging from the approval of the constitution, through independence for Algeria, to the ratification (by the thinnest of margins) in 1992 of the Maastricht treaty.
He runs Chateau Neercanne, the venue on the outskirts of the southern Dutch town of Maastricht, where 20 years ago European leaders gathered to agree the treaty that created the European Union and paved the way for the euro.
It might make sense for the four countries with exchange rates pegged to the euro: the Baltic trio of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, plus Bulgaria. (Slovenia and Slovakia have joined the euro already.) None of these will meet the Maastricht treaty's criteria for euro entry any time soon.
None of this much concerned Mr Kohl at the time of the Maastricht treaty, however.
Piet Dankert, then Europe minister, drafted a version of the Maastricht treaty that was too federalist even for Luxembourg (it was rejected).
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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In France a majority of those who voted for the Maastricht treaty would not do so again.
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.
But much more is needed than the fragile discipline imposed by the Maastricht treaty and by the stability pact, such as binding constraints on budget laws of member states and institutions able to enforce them.
Not only does the Maastricht treaty prohibit it from taking orders from politicians, but members of the executive board are appointed for eight-year, non-renewable terms, insulating them from pressures to please politicians in order to get reappointed.
Will that be a step too far for French voters, who in 1992 approved the Maastricht treaty, leading to the single currency, by only the narrowest of margins?
Ad hoc gestures of flexibility notably, the opt-outs written into the Maastricht treaty will not suffice.
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.
Presumably they've checked with the lawyers to make sure that this does not violate the Maastricht Treaty, which forbids governments from using the central bank to finance any of their deficits.
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