Belgium Joins France In Protesting Against British Recovery Plan

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26957, 17 December 1948, Page 5

Belgium Joins France In Protesting Against British Recovery Plan

NZPA Special Correspondent

Rec. 11 p.m. LONDON, Dec. 16. Belgium has now joined France in protesting against Britain’s four-year recovery programme. “ Belgium cannot accept Britain’s four-year Marshall aid programme as it would eventually lead to a fall in the living standards and a rise in prices on the Continent,” said Mr Roger Ockrent, the Belgian Marshall Plan Administrator. “If Britain’s principle that European nations must supply their awn needs from Europe irrespective of cost is followed, the Continent would become an autarchy. Britain would like to make sterling a hard currency and create a sterling problem alongside the dollar problem.”

There is considerable adverse comment in British political circles upon the fact that although details of Britain’s recovery plans were published in Paris three weeks ago, they have not yet been officially issued by the British Government. When the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Stafford Cripps, was questioned about this in the House of Commons, he said that Britain had given an undertaking not to publish details of its plan before the organisation for European economy recovery published its interim report. This had not yet been done though it was hoped that both reports could be issued before Christmas. Details of the British plans published in Paris were unauthorised and were due to a leakage of information.

In a report from London earlier this month, the NZPA special correspondent stated: On the question of British recovery plan under Marshall aid, the French regard the British proposal as “a model of pessimism,” and which; because of its austerity, will completely dislocate the .time table for producing an agreed fouryear master plan for all Europe. The British, convinced that they must become economically independent of America by 1952, are providing for an export surplus to Western Europe of £12,500.000 instead of the pre-war import surplus of £125,000.000. While Britain in proposing to buy chiefly essential goods and- few luxuries, the European countries have based their plans on the pattern of trade before the war, and have assumed they would have a much larger market in' Britain than the British plan will give them. 'One French view is that the British plan has produced a sterling shortage for many Continental countries which could >be as embarrassing as. the existing ’ dollar' shortage, and might be fatal to Marshall aid strategy as a whole. - ——