E.E.C.: fresh bid for agreement

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33433, 15 January 1974, Page 13

E.E.C.: fresh bid for agreement

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) BRUSSELS. January 14.

Two sessions of the E.E.C. Council of Ministers begin in Brussels today, but with little prospect of substantial progress in either.

A Foreign Ministers’ conference will make another effort to break the deadlock over the creation of a regional fund to promote the economic development of poorer parts of the Community.

Attempts to bridge the differences, principally between Britain and West Germany, have failed over the last two weeks, in spite of intensive diplomatic activity in Bonn and other capitals. Britain, which, along with Italy and Ireland, would be a principal beneficiary under the fund, wants its budget to be 3000 million units of account (about SNZ22BOm) over three years. West Germany, which would pay the largest contribution to the fund for only a modest return, wants it to have only 20 per cent of that total. The gap between the two sides provoked the deadlock causing the Community to miss the January 1 deadline for establishing the fund. Failure to agree today or tomorrow raises the problem of any future course of action. The credibility of the Common Market will undoubtedly suffer, but one idea gaining ground is for the proposals from the E.E.C. Commission, as they now stand, to be scrapped, and for a new approach to be thought out.

The advantage of this course of action would be to grant the Nine a breathing space to enable the debate to be resumed in several weeks time. This would enable Britain to disengage herself from what was, effectively, a veto imposed on other E.E.C. policies because of the fund deadlock.

This would be important to the other items on the Foreign Ministers’ agenda: resolutions for the transition

to the second stage of economic and monetary union, and preparations for a Com-munity-wide energy policy, need only Britain’s approval to be formally adopted. The energy discussions are bound to include the approach to be made to President Nixon’s invitation to the principal energy-using countries to a conference in Washington on February 11.

Other more technical items on the agenda include the Community’s relations with several Mediterranean countries—Spain, Israel, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco—whose trade agreements with the E.E.C. require to be brought up to date to take account of the enlargement of the E.E.C.

The Ministers of Agriculture of the Nine are also holding an emergency session, to examine a French request for an immediate 10 per cent increase in the guaranteed price paid to E.E.C. farmers for beef. France, backed by Ireland, Italy, and Belgium, wants the rise to offset the loss of earnings suffered by farmers

squeezed between lower prices and spiralling feed costs.

But no decision is expected, and the French move is seen as a gesture in support of her own fanners, and as notice that she expects a considerable price increase for beef when the E.E.C. farm prices for 1974-75 come up for discussion later this month, and again in February. .