Europe must wait
FOREIGN FOCUS CRABRO
Save us from our friends. M Couve de Murville used sometimes to suggest, when upbraided by his colleagues for his negative attitude towards British overtures to the Common Market, that they must secretly be grateful to him for advancing objections that they themselves would have felt constrained to advance if he had not done so for them. And of course he was right. Now we are seeing the same process in reverse. For perhaps the strongest motive for the current continental enthus- iasm for John Bull, the well-known fiancé, is the expectation that discussions about the marriage contract can be used to defer decisions on such embarrassing topics as the future of the European Community's own agricultural policy.
In fact there has not been a more inopportune moment than now for the opening of negotiations between Britain and the European Community, from a British point of view, these past ten years. The current topic of argument among British economists is not the desirability of trade liberalisation, but the desirability of quantitative controls on imports. The Gov- ernment is almost universally expected to go down to humiliating defeat as soon as it is forced to submit itself to the judgment of the country. Meanwhile the management of the British economy is effectively to be taken over by representatives of the Inter- national Monetary Fund who have learnt by bitter experience the fruitlessness of en- trusting it to the Labour government.
It may be argued that the French Fourth Republic, whose condition was not notice- ably stronger than that of the present British government, was not inhibited from striking an advantageous bargain when the Treaty of Rome was being drafted. But the French had two trump cards which are denied to us. They were geographically indispensable: and a European Community could not call on the most sophisticated civil service machine in western Europe to pre- sent their case.
So the kindest service which our friends in the European Community could perform for us would be to leave the British appli- cation for membership where it is, 'on the table,' until we have had an opportunity to rebuild our external finances and to en- dow ourselves with a government which at least has confidence in itself. Unfortunately the only European statesman who looks as if he might be prepared to perform this service for us is M Pompidou. We shall not know for sure until Sunday night whether he is to have an opportunity to do so; and even if he oes he cannot be relied upon in the sense that his former master could have been.
It is prudent to assume, therefore, that before the year is out—and very possibly before the summer is out, for this is one matter on which both partners to the Ger- man coalition are agreed so there is no need to wait for the German elections in September—the British government will be invited to take up its request for negoti- ations in earnest. What should our tactics be? We cannot very well turn the invitation
down. In order to do so without destroy- ing future prospects of a successful bid
to enter Mr Wilson would have to admit that our economy and his govern- ment were in no condition even to begin the process of assuming the obligations of membership. Although his latest pronounce- ments on the subject have sounded distinctly tepid about the desirability of an early negotiation, it would be wholly out of character for him to make any such ad- mission. But the Government would presum- ably have to try and go ahead provided it could obtain a parliamentary majority for doing so. In this case its first action should be to seek preliminary talks with the new French government.
The identity of interest between Britain and France regarding the future shape of the European Community has up to now been obscured by the imposing shadow of General de Gaulle, and still more by the obsessive attitude of the British Foreign Service towards him. It is in this sense, and in this sense alone, that his departure offers a major new opportunity. Britain and France share an instinctive preference for the gradual approach to supranationalism, a common series of commercial commit- ments to less developed countries outside Europe, a common interest in (by European Community standards) more realistic agri- cultural support prices, a common fragility of payments balance, and--above all--a common possession of the nuclear deterrent. There is here the scope for a genuine meeting of minds. To approach the Community by way of the supranational European Commission, to abandon the chance of constructing a European nuclear deterrent, and to accept the existing exor- bitant price structure of the common agri- cultural policy would show a degree of masochism which the Foreign Office ought to be able to shrug off now that it no longer needs to try and score points off General de Gaulle.
Secondly, a major overhaul of the Com- munity's agricultural policy should be re- garded as an essential precondition for British entry. There is nothing wrong about the concept of import levies as the mechan- ism of protection for home agriculture: it is the price structure which we would find intolerable. Excessive prices were accepted by the Six in response to the Ger- man insistence on tempering the wind to their inefficient farming industry. It is now suggested by the Germans that the Com- muity's agricultural prices should he some- what reduced, in return for a limitation on their obligation to finance the export of French surpluses which excessively high prices have encouraged.
This is not good enough. The reduction in prices which the Germans have in mind would he inadequate to eliminate many of the grossly uneconomic surpluses at present being produced. for which Britain would have to pay through the surrender of the proceeds of levies on British food imports into the common European fund. The French will no doubt insist that any limita- tion on such transfer na),ments would be contrary to the Rome Treaty, and it might well suit us to support them, for the best solution would be to lower prices to the point where there were not excessive sur- pluses to finance.
There is one other aspect of the common agricultural policy which must also he revised. This is the provision whereby the level of support for each national agri- cultural industry is denominated in dollars;
for this has been one of the main reasons for inflexibility of exchange rates. Unless and until the Community has advanced to the point of having a genuinely communal economic and monetary policy the possi- bility of internal parity adjustments must be recovered.
This time, at least, we have nothing to lose, and much to gain, from a prolonged negotiation which would give us time to put our own affairs in order. If we cannot be spared the embarrassment of bargaining from such a position of weakness, then let us at least go slow.
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