AN EVOLVING EUROPE WHAT KIND OF COMMUNITY WOULD BRITAIN BE JOINING?

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31378, 25 May 1967, Page 12

AN EVOLVING EUROPE WHAT KIND OF COMMUNITY WOULD BRITAIN BE JOINING?

(By

MICHAEL GARDNER

of the “Economist”)

Britain’s second bid to enter the European Common Market will not be called off just because of General de Gaulle’s bucket of ice cold water last week. Everyone knew he possessed such a bucket and that he was likely to use it.

The oracle at the Elysee Palace has set not only Mr Wilson thinking furiously, but also his partners in the Common Market itself. Some of them have always wanted the British as members. Britain’s accession, they argue, will make Western Europe’s infant union grow up fast. So far it has been mainly of only regional importance. The addition to the Six of a power of Britain’s size and status would put Europe back into world class politics for the first time since the war.

But pessimists among them see Britain’s entry diluting the, community instead. Like de Gaulle’s France, Britain would refuse to look at any European federal blueprints. Together they would water down the organisation into a politically supine free trade system. Paradoxically, the General himself does not see it this way; he has other reasons for keeping out a strong potential rival. The Hallstein Omen

But an event that took place three days before Britain’s application for entry has pointed up the underlying debate within the E.E.C. itself. On May 8, Professor Walter Hallstein, who for 10 years had been president of the European Commission in Brussels and personified its ambitions, announced his resignation. That might seem normal enough after 10 years. But this is not a normal case. Hallstein is a dedicated German federalist who has never tired of repeating that the commission “is not in business but in politics.” Almost alone, even among federalists, he has regarded it as the embryo executive of a United States of Europe. And now he has been virtually forced out of office by General de Gaulle

The General has been gunning for him ever since Hallstein’s commission proposed, in 1965, that it should administer the Common Market’s $2 billion farm fund and be responsible for its management in part to the European Parliament. The General was having none of this incipient federalism. For him the commission is, and ought to remain, only a bunch of officials who should let the national Governments get on with the job of governing. He has insisted on Hallstein’s departure.

For a year, the German Government jibbed at this. But when Paris and Bonn recently got on to better terms, Hallstein’s days were numbered. He preferred to quit at his own chosen moment.

11 are not entirely black. For . all General de Gaulle’s grim i determination to push aside r the Hallsteins of this world, eit is the commission, not the o governments, which has been i speaking for the Common Market Six in the crucial and

His withdrawal removes the main obstacle to the gradual merger of the three Euro-

pean Communities (the Common Market and its pale sisters, Euratom and the coal-steel pool) into a single giant. On the face of it the new consolidated community should be a very grand affair. But many fear the giant will in fact have feet of clay. They expect de Gaulle to use the merger as a chance to take another swipe at the European institutions he dislikes.

So Hallstein’s departure under duress touches the federalists on a sore spot: will the new era mean a further weakening of the European community which seemed allconquering five years ago? Even apart from de Gaulle, experience has shown that it is easier for European bodies to bring about free trade than to induce governments to operate joint policies. It has taken seven years of struggle and crisis to get joint policies for agriculture. And Euratom, the only body set. up to achieve them in an advanced industrial field—nuclear energy—is now in a state of semi-dissolution. Federalists may well fear that the combined nationalisms of de Gaulle, Wilson and the state bureaucracies will be too much for them In the future. An Umpire Needed

It is indeed clear that the pioneers of European unity are not likely to see their plans fulfilled in the form they originally imagined. Yet a closer look at the situation suggests their prospects

turbulent later stages of the Kennedy round of talks on world tariff cuts.

This confirms the experience of the Common Market's many agricultural crises of the last seven years. When the Six need real results, they find they also need the commission. Oddly enough, de Gaulle himself once pointed out the reason why: the six governments just cannot agree by themselves. They need an umpire. The commission is the only one to hand.

The most striking feature of Europe today is that events are pushing the nations to work together in more and more fields where they need an umpire. And these are just the fields in which the new candidate for the European club, Britain, is the most interested. Joint Enterprises Harold Wilson never tire of calling for joint Europeai policies in the advanced industries, like computers or aircraft, in order to compete with America's giant Anns. The difficulties of the French and British in co-operating on building the Concord supersonic airliner show that tighter forms of joint management will be needed to produce other aircraft—like a European “airbus.” On that project, not only two countries, but three, counting

Germany, or even five, counting Italy and Holland, may be co-operating. An umpire will be indispensable. In short, collective industrial projects in which Governments are involved are political commitments. And in London even more politically slanted ideas are. now beginning to circulate, like that of a European non-nuclear defence community. All such notions point in the end to more political cohesion in Europe. Britain may not get into the Community. But if it does, a sound long-term bet may be that Britain will actually help turn the community into a European political union.