Britain at odds with Six

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33067, 7 November 1972, Page 19

Britain at odds with Six

(By

CHRISTOPHER MATTHEWS.

Reuter correspondent)

BRUSSELS, Nov. 6.

Britain will be defending views markedly different from those, of the present Common Market members when the Foreign and Transport Ministers of the nine countries of the enlarged European Community meet in Brussels today. For the Foreign Ministers, the main item on the twoday agenda will be discussion of a plan to rationalise the Community’s present piecemeal trading relations with Mediterranean countries by establishing a huge free-trade area.

On the transport front, the principal issue is the dispute between Britain and the Six over their scheme to set 11 tons as the maximum permis-

sible axle-weight for lorries in the community. Britain last week suggested that it would be wrong to rush through a new Mediterranean policy before giving careful consideration to the broad political issues involved, including possible reactions from the United States and the Soviet Union.

Since the United States has in recent weeks been privately making clear its violent opposition to the Mediterranean scheme, there has been some speculation about Britain’s exact motives in making this suggestion.

There has also been some suspicion over the British view that discussion of these broad political issues should take place, not through the Community’s normal machinery, but in the inter-Govem-mental framework of the Nine’s regular foreign policy consultations.

E.E.C. sources say that noone is opposed to debating the Mediterranean issue at a foreign policy session — the next one is due on November 20 and 21 in the Hague—but that the Six are against making a new Mediterranean arrangement conditional on agreement in this framework.

The United States believes that any extension of the Common Market’s existing trade accords in the Mediterranean would damage her interests, and run counter to the rules of the international commerce.

American officials have made it plain that they would fight any such move by the E.E.C., both in next year’s world trade negotiations and in the international monetary talks due to begin then. The transport issue is much more clear-cut, and arises from the plans of the Six to harmonise legislation be-

tween the present memberStates over axle-weights. Italy, the Netherlands, and West Germany at present have a 10-ton limit, while France, Belgium, and Luxemburg allow 13 as the maximum.

But Britain, whose own limit is 10 tons, refuses to accept their compromise figure of 11 tons, arguing that this would allow "juggernaut” lorries to wreck the British road and bridge system.

While some observers expect Britain to accept 10.5 tons, France refuses to agree to less than 11. E.E.C. authorities have advised the Six against changing their position, since there is no reason to believe that an 11-ton limit would, in the words of one source, “lead to Westminster Abbey collapsing some time in the next decade."