DIFFICULTIES WITH E.E.C.

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30807, 20 July 1965, Page 14

DIFFICULTIES WITH E.E.C.

Unity “A Long! Time Coming”: The Common Market Community was very difficult to realise in practice, said Professor Jean Varloot, professor of French in the faculty of letters and human sciences at the University of Paris, in an interview in Christchurch. Professor Varloot said the lack of harmony between France and Germany and Italy too, over agricultural products made it look as though real unity would be a long time in coming. “And until there is real unity,” he said, “it is unlikely that any more overtures about Britain joining the Common Market will be possible." Professor Varloot has already spent a week at Otago University lecturing on 18th century French literature, and will do the same at Canterbury. Auckland and Victoria universities. His visit is sponsored by the New Zealand Government under a scheme for bringing a French and German academic to New Zealand each year. Professor Varloot has written critical editions (with his own annotations) of the works of Voltaire, Rousseau and Diderot and has had many articles published on his special subject. He said he found the staff at Otago University very much in touch with current French methods of teaching, and that there was a good interchange of teachers between the two countries. “It was very congenial and pleasant to find a French-speaking community on this side of the world.” he said. Professor Varloot praised the practice of sending New Zealand students to New Caledonia for several months to broaden their knowledge of French culture. “The one at Otago University who spoke the best French was a student who had been in Tahiti for six months,” he said. Mrs Varloot, who has accompanied her husband to New Zealand, is a teacher of French, Latin and Greek at a state secondary school for girls in Paris. She plans to visit some high schools in Christchurch.