THE ECONOMY
Whose Europe the producers' or the consumers'?
JOCK BRUCE-GARDYNE
Like the Ramsbothams of yore, the assembled Tories, and — in particular the assembled scribblers, found their visit to the seaside last week disappointing. There were
no wrecks, and nobody drownded
In fact nothing to laugh at at all.
High hopes had been placed in Thursday's agenda. Mr Heath was expected to go ape over Europe, and to be lynched by the roughnecks from the shires. With any luck there would be a repeat performance in the evening, when Mr Heath and Mr Lawson were to be amongst Sir Robin Day's guests on Question Time.
It didn't happen. A few 'Judas Heath' banners were waved lackadaisically. Mr Jonathan Aitken delivered a well- rehearsed anathema which was generally reckoned to have gone over the top. The former Prime Minister asserted, dubiously, that a single European currency and a single European central bank were amongst the natural consequences of the Single European Act, and enquired mali- ciously what — or who — was holding Mr Lawson up, since everyone knew that he, like all well brought-up citizens, wished to join the European currency system. Mr Lawson replied with comparable malice that at any rate when we did join we would not walk out again in weeks, like some people he could name. But of wrecks and drowning there was none.
It seems a pity. For there is material for a real conflict over the future shape of Europe. Mrs Thatcher demands a de- regulated, user-friendly Community. Yet she is passionately opposed to the dis- appearance of the internal frontier posts, without which rabies will run riot, and IRA terrorists (who do not, apparently, take advantage of the absence of such frontier posts in Ulster) will come and go at their leisure. And where our own rules happen to be less user-friendly — as, for instance, our regulation of financial services, or our taxation of drinks and tobacco — than those of our continental neighbours, then ours must be the model for 1992. We are not having the French — let alone the Greeks — locking out Japanese or Swiss financial institutions because their banks have been refused a licence to trade in Tokyo or Zurich. We intend to do the locking-out ourselves. Well, we can't have the sheikhs turning BP into a country member of the Opec cartel, can we? If BP wants to help get oil prices back up to $18 a barrel, as it says it does, that's a different matter.
Likewise our continental partners. They responded almost more in pity than in anger to the Edict of Bruges. The French and Germans talk of a pooling of their diplomatic missions to Mongolia (presum- ably that would ease the problem of finding diplomats to go there). But that does not mean to say that the Japanese can sell their cars without let or hindrance in France or Italy just because they happen to have been built in Europe.
Meanwhile the shape of things to come — unless we are rather careful — is weekly coming off the drawing-boards in Brussels. Nobody seriously imagined that the Com- munity would fall for the American sugges- tion that all the industrial countries should pledge themselves to abolish agricultural subsidies (in fact, as one member of the Cabinet remarked with prescience to me in Brighton, the prospect of a substantial cut in the cost of farm support this year, thanks to the American drought, is already lead- ing to calls for higher support prices and a boost to surplus production).
But agriculture is sui generis. What ought to worry us more, it seems to me, is the steady stream from Brussels of so- called 'anti-dumping' duties, on all sorts of (mostly Oriental) artefacts. In the last twelve months those who use such things have been required to pay 'provisional duties' of anything from 12 per cent to 43 per cent on Japanese daisy-wheel compu- ter printers; anything from 18 to 30 per cent on videos from Japan and Korea; 69 per cent on Chinese paint brushes (as if I `Best wishes — Graham Greene.' did not have enough to contend with in efforts at DIY decoration); and surcharges ranging from £18 to £45 on typewriters coming from what are said to be 'screw- driver' plants situated in Wrexham, New- port, Brunswick and Brittany — all of them (the plants, I mean) built with benefit of substantial subsidies from us taxpayers, German, French or British as the case may be. The current locus classicus, which is causing the boys in Brussels sleepless nights, is that of Japanese microchips. It is alleged that these were dumped upon us three years ago, and should be surcharged accordingly. Unfortunately the price of microchips has almost quadrupled in the interval, and surcharging them now would put large segments of the European elec- tronics industry out of business. So what do you do? Ruin the Community's own middle-man, or allow the Japanese sup- pliers to get away with murder? It is a delicate conundrum.
The signals out of Brussels are bleak for the consumers, at any rate. It is alleged that in some instances Japanese and Pacific rim producers have had the cheek to absorb anti-dumping duties into their pro- fit (or loss) margins. Where this has happened, the Commission is robust: sup- pliers, it suggests, must suffer a double dose of duty to teach them manners.
There is, however, another side to the coin. The intervention of Commissioner Peter Sutherland saved us some hundreds of millions of pounds off the dowry prop- osed to persuade Professor Smith to take Austin Rover off our hands. With any luck Commissioner Sutherland will likewise block the French Government's plans to leave French taxpayers with an open- ended obligation to pick up the bills at Renault, and trim our threatened obliga- tions toward Ford's new plants in South Wales. Glory Be] Put it all together, though, and what you have is a choice finely balanced between a Community which exists for the benefit of its own consumers, and a Community which exists for the benefit of its own producers.
The Bench — the Council of Ministers — is out. And likely to remain that way, by the looks of it, for many moons to come, while it argues over common banks and currency. Meanwhile the fundamentals, which matter to you and me, are in danger of going by default.
Previous page
