German Plan For European Unity

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30594, 10 November 1964, Page 22

German Plan For European Unity

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copyright) BONN, November 6. West Germany will today publish a plan to break the stalemate on European unification and give a new impetus to unity after months of stagnation and acrimony.

The plan, drawn up after four months of consultations with Bonn’s Common Market partners, is in two parts—one on political unity and one on development of economic unity. The main lines of the political plan are reliably understood to include the creation, for a transitional period, of a committee which would prepare for regular meetings of Government leaders and chief ministers of the partner countries.

This committee would help to prepare proposals for a more binding form of political co-operation to be established after treaty negotiations.

The German document is also believed to propose speeding-up moves to unify the existing executives of the Common Market, the Coal and Steel Community and Euratom. It is also thought to favour increasing the role of the Common Market Parliament.

Observers in Bonn said the loose co-operation foreseen in the transitional phase was

a concession to the French conception of a “Europe of Fatherlands,” while the idea of a supranational political union at present opposed by France was relegated to the future. The German plan is expected to be discussed at next week’s Brussels meeting of the Common Market foreign ministers.