‘Crucial Deadline For Common Market’

Press, Volume C, Issue 29706, 27 December 1961, Page 9

‘Crucial Deadline For Common Market’

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) NEW YORK, December 26. The Western world faced a crucial deadline of its own making at midnight on New Year’s Eve over the decision on the future of the second stage of the European Common Market, the “New York Times” warned today. “For under the Rome Treaty that created the European Economic Community, the six nations constituting it must decide by that time whether, having completed with spectacular success the first four-year-stage of the Common Market, they will now proceed to the second stage, from which there is no return,” the newspaper said.

‘"Hie alternative is to abandon it or postpone it in disagreement over issues that have defied solution. “On their decision will depend the’furthei progress of some of the most important and promising movements In the West. This decision will speed or retard the drive toward European political unification in a future United States of Europe as a bulwark of Western defence. "It will gravely affect the

negotiations for the adhesion of Britain and other European nations to the Common Market. It will have a profound effect on President Kennedy's new programme for bigger and freer world trade. ‘The main issue confronting the community members is the same that confronts Britain and the United States in relation to them—agriculture ... it must adopt unanimously by the New Year deadline a common agricultural policy. “Such a policy calls for free trade in agricultural as in industrial, products within the community leading to common community - wide prices. But though it provides for a common tariff against outside competition, say from the United States. West Germany balks at too rapid a transition for fear of hurting its highly-protected farmers. “President de Gaulle, on the other hand, plagued by farmer uprisings, threatens to veto the community’s advance to the second stage, which would deprive him of a veto, unless Germany does

open her markets to French food products as well. “French - German reconciliation is the rock on which the whole community has been built. That is why a mere trade dispute cannot be permitted to destroy it. “And that is why European statesmanship must be expected to hammer out some kind of agreement in time to prevent even a postponement that would tarnish the community's image of success and provide a field day for its enemies,” the New York “Times” said.