None of this means that the conventional wisdom should be junked. The London declaration may be just another declaration–the chancelleries of Europe are wallpapered with bloodcurdling promises to do horrible things to combatants if the miseries of the Balkans are not ended by teatime next Tuesday. Conversely, the economies of the EU member states are not in deep trouble; a feature of Davos, so far, has been the congratulations bestowed by all and sundry on the 11 members of Euroland for the smooth and successful launch of their single currency. But the odd conjunction of events this week does mean that the politicians charged with stewardship of the European economies are worth a look. In the next year, they may have a lot to do.

They’re an interesting bunch. Gordon Brown, Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Oskar Lafontaine, the Finance ministers of Britain, France and Germany, have much in common. They are around the same age–Lafontaine the eldest at 55, Brown the youngest at 47. They are all men of the left of center, and, even in a supposedly nonideological age, not ashamed of it. None of them is a fool. Brown’s recent thinking on the global financial architecture has been praised by financier-turned-theorist George Soros; Strauss-Kahn is one of those Frenchmen who seem to know something interesting about almost anything that comes up (and without old-fashioned French arrogance, too). And each has probably dreamed that he might one day have a bigger job than the one he now holds.In Lafontaine’s case, that’s a certainty; he was the SPD’s candidate for the West German chancellorship in 1980 and sometimes acts as if he won the office in last fall’s election. When Britain’s Labour Party suddenly had to choose a new leader in 1994, Brown was a plausible front runner; some of his supporters have never quite got over their shock that Tony Blair raced past him to the prize. Strauss-Kahn’s time, by contrast, may be in the future; as an undoubted star in the French government, he already looks a plausible candidate for prime minister in 2002 if, as most observers assume, Lionel Jospin vacates the Matignon for a second run at the presidency.

Brown and Strauss-Kahn were both in Davos last week. Lafontaine was due to join them, but pressure of work from the German presidency of the EU kept him at home. (It is striking how many Europeans at Davos are perplexed by the evident difficulty the new German government has had in getting its bureaucratic act together. Did Max Weber write all those books in vain?) At a morning session on Friday, the Scot and the Frenchman joined a panel on the global economy with Lafontaine’s deputy Heiner Flassbeck, U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and Eisuke Sakakibara, Mr. Yen himself. The consensus: more cooperation is needed among the United States, the EU and Japan; new flows of capital to the developed world need to be found; new international standards of transparency and surveillance of international lending should be imposed, and the Japanese financial crisis is over. Or past the worst. Or not as bad as last year. Maybe.

Brown and Strauss-Kahn are on the same wavelength, and evidently like each other. Both want the EU to share a greater burden in the world’s recovery. Strauss-Kahn, say his friends, would like to do all he can to help Brown make the case for early British membership in the monetary union. Brown, for his part, speaks with feeling of the strides that continental Europe has made toward market-oriented restructuring. Yet, for a while, something will keep the two men a mite apart–just as it will draw Strauss-Kahn and Lafontaine together. Like it or not, the key decisions in the European economy in the coming years will be taken by Euroland’s members and Euroland’s institutions. That makes the French and German Finance ministers natural partners, and it keeps their British colleague at something of an arm’s length.

Whether the EU can be a giant in both an economic and a political sense so long as Britain remains uncertain about the great European adventure is not a topic for debate at Davos this time round. Understandable, perhaps; hearing about English neuroses can be awfully boring. Still, it’s something that needs to be dealt with. Maybe next year.