EEC —a lesson from Norway
These are not good times for the European Economic Community, nor for Britain as a member of if. The failure of her partners to support Holland in the recent oil dispute produced disenchantment even among the most fanatical of Community-minded commentators, people once so vociferous, now so silent. An independent poll, published under the aegis of the European Commission, shows that the majority in both Britain and Denmark is disenchanted with membership; and the Danes, acting in evident despair with the politicians who brought them into the Community, have returned an almost wholly frivolous parliament. The regional fund in which Mr Heath placed such hopes has vanished almost before it began; and the Commission has now recommended severely deflationary policies to the member states. And to cap all this the news has come from Norway, whose people demonstrated their independence and their courage fourteen months ago by declining to follow Britain into Europe, that they have never had it so good.
Even Norway's pro-Europeans cannot explain the phenomenon away. It seems to be due to two things, the intelligent exploitation by the Norwegian government of its North Sea oil resources, and the fact that it negotiated a deal With the EEC which created something like an Industrial free trade area, but kept Norway out of the crippling obligations of the Common Agricultural Policy. This, of course, was a policy recommended by many in Britain who opposed the Treaty of Brussels, and it was a policy that could have been easily negotiated because of the desperate need of the European countries for freer trade in industrial goods with Britain. Alas, our own Prime Minister, beset with political fantasies about a European destiny, could not see the practical possibilities which lay under his nose. Even he, however, cannot long continue to ignore the evidence which is presented day by day, and which shows beyond a peradventure that our European involvement has been a virtually unqualified disasater. Fortunately, there are two rays of hope. The first is the greater bloody-mindedness the British are now showing in the councils of Europe. The second is the frank admission of members of the Commission that a renegotiation is possible: this immediately dispels the desperate propaganda of the suicidally European factions in British politics that the Labour Party's policy on this matter was an impossibility. We want renegotiations now, before what used to be called the short-term costs of membership complete the ruin of Britain.
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