Outflanking the French
From Our Common Market Correspondent BRUSSELS TliE French arrived in Brussels this week pre- pared to be tough. It was obvious agreement was not far off on manufactures from Canada, Australia and New Zealand. It was also obvious that this was not going to be a topic on which Britain would fight particularly hard. The British had already said privately that they were pre- pared to accept the phased application of the common external tariff of the Common Market to these products from the moment of Britain's entry. Nevertheless, the French wanted to push further and reduce Britain's chances of amending the timetable of preference cuts at a later stage if the Commonwealth should protest. At a long session of the Ministers of the Six on Monday afternoon Couve de Murville stuck rigidly to a formula which excluded effective consultation with the Commonwealth in working out the agreement and no argument could budge him. At a second session on Tuesday afternoon Signor Colombo, the young Italian Economics Minister who is rapidly becoming the hero of the British delegation, produced a compromise formula pro- posing 'consultation within the framework of the Rome Treaty'—a phrase which will in fact mean as much as the British want it to. This formula was clearly going to be accepted by the British. It was still opposed by the French and it was finally pushed through by the other five members of the Market amid accusations that the French were being unnecessarily obstructive.
This is a significant development. It is not sur- prising that the French continue to take a tough line with the British. They still give a strong im- pression of improvising a strategy which can be used to extract large concessions from the British and could be rapidly adapted to exclude them altogether if President de Gaulle gives the word. What does surprise is the tenacity of the other five in insisting on almost unnecessarily reason- able terms for Britain and their success in first jsolating and finally outflanking the French.
The British delegation is in an understandable state of euphoria and argues that negotiations of this sort have a logic of their own which, once it begins to work, is not easily diverted by ex- traneous factors like President de Gaulle, tnut.(ss7, mature. There are endless difficulties and p weapons and the Labour Party.
One's own feeling is that this joy is a bit bilities of obstruction ahead. The French are saying, 'You see, everything is easy so long as you accept the Rome Treaty to the letter.' The .Rome Treaty is a powerful weapon. It was signi- ficant that not even Signor Colombo could deliver anything but a fundamentally gloomY declaration on the critical question of Common- wealth food-producers. He did his best with a vague reference. to the need to find some long- term arrangement- for the Commonwealth after the Market's transitional period ends in 1970. But on the vital point he was adamant—the quantities of food exported by the Common- wealth to Britain and Europe could not be guaranteed because the Treaty would be violated.
For some countries perhaps it is true that if you can export less at a higher price you are all right. But, as Mr. Marshall, the New Zealand Deputy Prime Minister, was pointing out with vigour on Tuesday in another part of Brussels, this doctrine is no consolation at all to dairy and sheep farmers in New Zealand—ultimately the political masters of the negotiation.
'Sure, he's a bit premature; but I always said, like father like son.'
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