Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
From Our Common Market Correspondent
BRUSSELS
WHY did the French do it? Anyone who has had anything to do with the Common Market negotiations must have asked himself that question a hundred times in the last twelve months, but never with more insistence and anxiety than in the aftermath of last weekend's proceedings in Brussels when only a last-minute intervention by the French delegation prevented agreement on the main issue of the conference— food imports from Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
There are two possible explanations of French tactics. One is that M. Couve de Murville, the French Foreign Minister, merely dragged in the now notorious financial regulations as a con- venient issue on which to hold up the conference. The other explanation is that, white the French are by now fully resigned to Britain's entry into Europe, they are determined to see that the French farmer gains a good deal from it.
A lot depends on which of these interpretations is the right one. For if the financial regulations are really a matter of vital French interest then one may hope at any rate that when they have been got out of the way the French will behave. If, however, France has been looking for an excuse then presumably she will later find some other issue on which to delay matters especially since the French thesis about the pliability of the British will almost certainly prove wrong, Since fast Sunday the British line, at any rate, has been to assume the better alternative. The optimists have pointed out that the French demands on finance are perfectly logical. For the issue is simply this : who is going to pay for the disposal of French farm surpluses in the long run? The theoretical answer provided by the Common Market's agricultural regulations and by the Rome Treaty is that any support buying and disposal of surpluses as well as any structural improvements in the Community's agriculture (which might prevent surpluses arising) will be financed after 1970 from Community funds. Since these funds will be accumulated largelY out of levies raised on imports from the outside world, the Germans, who are the largest im- porters of foodstuffs in the EEC, have naturally objected that it is they who will be paying the bulk of the levies and therefore subsidising French agriculture. This they do not intend to do. They propose to escape by a loophole rather stir- prisingly left for them by the French last JanuarY when the agricultural agreements were final-1Y passed. The loophole is that the Rome Treaty lays it down that a decision about the use of Com- munity funds will be taken by a unanimous vote of the Council of Ministers on a proposal of the European Commission. Furthermore, although aalfitelrevli levies i ebelongy NN.ji irtet„,heerot r ments a year after the budget year in, which they were not spent. The 'possibilities left open here ytotonathtieonCaTilgiloiNtj-ellii.in31- for German prevarication are therefore almost as limitless as the fury of the French. What Mr. Heath was being asked to give his acceptance of Oil Sunday morning was a document which appeared to amplify and interpret the finance regulations in the French sense.
This tediously complicated issue, say the Optimists , was one which the French were bound to insist upon getting settled and moreover it was One which was strictly relevant to the Common- Wealth food issue. There will, they argue, cer- tainly be a dogfight over it in October, but it can be solved and then all will be plain sailing.
Unfortunately this analysis leaves out of account the way in which the whole business was brought up. The matter had been raised by the French at the meeting of Ministers on Thursday and Mr. Heath had told the conference (a trifle disingenuously, all things considered) that of nurse Britain accepted the regulations and the Rome Treaty on this point. The French there- °Poo gave notice that they would need some amplification of what Mr. Heath understood by the regulations if they were to give their blessing to the 'general view' of the terms of Britain's entry--a phrase which was generally taken to mean that it would have to be settled sometime before the autumn. No more was heard of it until Midnight on Saturday when it was suddenly pro- duced again with the demand that it must be settled before the morning. The confused process by Which a new draft of the 'amplification' was drawn up by M. Robert Marjolin, the French Member of the European Commission, was half- accepted and later rejected by the Germans, Dutch and Belgians and was eventually turned (h)wn by Mr. Heath was by all accounts in accordance with the best traditions of fifteenth- century diplomacy. It has not improved Anglo- zrench relations. But in any case why did the French
Put off raising the question again until it
aras pretty clear that there was no time available to deal with it, unless it was because they were determined to postpone further progress till the autumn at least? It is difficult to find a satisfac- tnrY answer. bees this mean, then, that we are doomed to another bout of French intransigence in the
autumn and a long-drawn-out negotiation with a dying fall? Not necessarily. For the really sig- nificant fact about the meeting which is just past is the extent to which the French were forced to give ground in the face of the united wishes of their partners. Couve de Murville had begun the week by blocking a series of Belgian and Dutch amendments to the Six's plan on temperate food- stuffs, which were designed to help the British. Having thus forced the conference to adopt the procedure of asking the British to suggest their own amendments, Couve proceeded to denounce them as totally inacceptable when they were made. He proposed that the conference should adjourn till the autumn. The fury with which this suggestion was greeted by the other five members of the Market appears to have severely shaken the French, especially since M. Spaak's usual burst of temper, which in this case included the sensational threat that the other five might ex- pose French isolation publicly, was not received with the usual amused embarrassment but as a serious suggestion. The consequence was that during the meeting of the Six and subsequently with the British the French were induced to take a moderate line and an acceptable formula was emerging.
In the end, of course, they got their way. But not without an appalling row in which the Five made their anger very clearly felt. Reaction in the European capitals since the conference ended, particularly in Germany, cannot have been par- ticularly reassuring to the Quai d'Orsay. It appears, in short, that for once France has over- played her hand. In Bonn It is doubtful whether even Dr. Adenauer's waning influence can keep the Franco-German axis quite what it was unless things change. In Rome there is acute annoyance that the plans for a summit on political union will have to be postponed again. And in the other capitals irritation with the French is fast be- coming endemic. Most important of all, the European Commission, which has in the past supported the French on the grounds that they were taking a 'European' stand in defence of the Rome 'Treaty, deserted them at a critical moment 'Le Roi s'omu on Saturday night. Professor Hallstein cannot afford to be on the losing side.
All things considered the French may feel a little differently by October.
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