THE ECONOMY
Everyone's still out of step but our Maggie
JOCK BRUCE-GARDYNE
Brussels wenty-five years ago- in Brussels, I witnessed Ted Heath's reception by the Anglo-Saxon press corps on the night that France's veto finally blocked our first attempt to join the European Community. `France'; he announced, 'is isolated'. It is the only occasion I have ever seen a politician receiving a standing ovation from assembled hacks.
After 16 years of our full participation, things have not changed all that much. There is still fog in the Channel, and the Continent is still isolated. Don't get me wrong. Over many of the items in conten- tion at this week's Brussels summit, Britain was to be counted amongst the good guys — or perhaps one should say good guys and doll. The contrary nature of the German attitude to 'budgetary discipline' — more of it in general, but less of it for German farmers — irritates the rest at least as much as any of our PM's little ways. If there is a bete noire of the Twelve nowadays it is not perfidious Albion, but the greedy Greek. Everyone without ex- ception (theoretically, anyway) shares Mrs T's conviction that we cannot go on build- ing barns to stock with food until it rots. In the drive to complete the 'internal market' — Britain's Commissioner Lord Cock- field's 'Europe sans frontieres' — HMG is genuinely in the vanguard (even if Lord Cockfield's little schemes to remove the zero rates from VAT have caused him to suffer punishment at the hands of his former head-mistress).
Yet as one senior British mandarin in Brussels remarked to me this week, 'They still have no idea back home how wide and deep the gulf is between our concept of Community and that of all our partners.' For fundamentally our ambition is to achieve a Community for consumers. Whereas theirs — albeit in many different ways — is to get to 'Europe, Inc.': a Europe for producers, to keep the lesser breeds from East and West at bay.
`Europe', the current Belgian president of the Council of Ministers, M. Wilfried Martens, told his local press last Sunday, `cannot be reduced to a mere affair of budgetary discipline.' To which one and all of the hot and harrassed heads of govern- ment on a broiling night in Brussels would no doubt have said `d'accord' . But to us and in this respect our Prime Minister is nothing if not 'one of us' — the onus of proof rests, and ought to rest, on those who want more money, to prove not just that they need it, but also that they would use it efficiently to the benefit of those who have to supply it — the private taxpayers. To all our partners, fundamentally without exception, a bigger budget is itself the proof of Community virility.
The scheme to allocate £4.5 billion for Community research and development is the classic case in point. Here we have been in a minority of one — and such distinguished worthies as our very own Lord Plumb, late of the National Farmers' Union, and now President of the European Parliament, found our 'myopia' shaming. Our partners pointed out with exaspera- tion that this was one programme from which we would be amongst the leading beneficiaries. To which the Prime Minister replied, 'But what precisely is it to be spent upon? You haven't told me that.' And of course she was right: they hadn't, and they did not know. 'Forget about the length and feel the quality': that is their slogan. Now if one starts — as I readily confess that I do — from the viewpoint that politicians are not to be trusted with our money further than you can throw them, then Mrs Thatcher is fighting for the citizens of Europe. Would we really be the better for a squadron of 'sniffer 'planes', or a fleet of de Loreans, constructed in the sacred name of Europe?
But unfortunately our champion has an Achilles heel. Her budgetary `abatement'. `You see', one of my Brussels informants from amongst the Brits told me mournful- ly, 'our budget rebate ranks technically as a Community expense.' Well of course it does, because it is — and a very large one, more than twice as large as they bargained for when they agreed to give to the Prime Minister 'our money back' at Fontaine- bleau two years ago. So what to us — and above all to our leader — is no more than equity, is to all our partners nothing more nor less than double standards. `She lec- tures us on budgetary discipline — and yet insists that one of the largest single items in the budget is hers by divine right!' And so it is, I fear, not all that difficult to see, for all the angry words and soft evasions of the Brussels summit, what is going to be the outcome. Once more we shall trade an increase in Community resources, coupled — naturally — with solemn promises of future good behaviour by the agriculture ministers, for a formula to guarantee until the next collision-point that 'our money back' will grow pro rata with our money out.
To many in the Brussels hierarchy there could be a lot worse outcomes. The Com- munity, they tell you, simply has to have more cash from its members, or it will break up: and then we would find that we, as taxpayers of the individual member- countries were spending more, not less, on farm support. Equally the Mediterranean member-countries do need more resources from the Community chest to help revital- ise their poorest regions. Not as much as they were demanding in Brussels this week, no doubt — and it does not help their case that the unloved Greeks should lead the beggars' chorus. But it is more than the northern members are at present willing to concede. And let us not forget that UK companies are doing very nicely out of the liberalisation of the Spanish market: exports up by 12 per cent `in real terms'. Of how many other markets could that be said?
Optimists insist that, this time, the pledges of restraint in spending on farm surpluses are for real. Look what's hap- pened to the dairy sector already, they point out. Now there is the will to tackle the arable crops.
It takes a lot of faith to believe that after the Brussels summit. For the deal which was essentially cobbled together between France and Germany involved the aban- donment — for the time being, at any rate — of the proposed tax on oils and fats in return for the postponement of `agri- money' reform, which is the system where- by the Germans preserve their least effi- cient part-time farms and encourage their production. So what is in prospect is not just the presentation of the cellar key to the lush, to reward him for signing on with Alcoholics Anonymous. He is also to be given his very own miniature bottle of fire-water to keep him happy.
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