Free trade is not enough
Sir: AFTA or EEC? That is not the question.
The question is: a greater Europe, including Britain, or a little Europe dependent, despite Gaullism, upon American patronage and pro- tection? The political logic of the economics of AFTA is that Washington with all its domestic cares and Far Eastern responsibilities should maintain, and even increase, rather than reduce its Western European commitments.
In Le Deft americain, which is now being as excessively belittled as it was extravagantly praised on publication, M Jean-Jacques Servan- Schreiber points out that the federalising sys- tem of the Six, by removing national economic barriers, has facilitated us industrial conquest. A market has been enlarged of which great American corporations have taken full advan- tage. The community has indeed proved some- thing of the merger that precedes the real take- over.
Can our Government, which has been wrong about most matters, be right to keep on chant- ing `Common Market or nothing'? Was not Mr W. Horsfall Carter nearer the mark in his letter to you, sir (26 July)?
Europe has moved on. Eastern Europeans are in revolt against the Yalta partition. In the West France's quotas are the latest demonstra- tion that when up against it she will ignore supranational authority. Britain did likewise when the surcharge was levied on imports from EFTA partners. The common factor in Eastern and Western Europe is the renewal of the national principle—within a larger European patriotism.
Is it not time for a new approach to Europe whose Sixes and Sevens are but one of its several divisions? No organisation or com- munity is immutable—if the will to change exists. General de Gaulle is back but Mao's May should have made him receptive to new ideas—if our masters have any.
Economically, the European nations want to provide first for internal balance and stability and then to offer trading advantages to their partners. Unwilling to federate, they must be free to discriminate.
Politically, they must seek a common diplo- macy and defence and an agreed approach to the outside world. Otherwise, the Western Europeans must indeed implore the Americans to take them over, leaving millions of fellow- Europeans in the East within the Soviet em- brace. The Soviet-American condominium is a policy, but what European government would dare put it to its electorate?
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