Spain and the EEC
Sam White
Paris What will France do about Spain's application to join the Common Market? In De Gaulle's or Pompidou's days there would have been no doubt as to the answer: given Franco's disappearance, and the transition to a democracy marked by a multi-party system including a legalised communist party and a free press, the French would not only have supported the application but would have actively sponsored it. The idea that Spain should one day become a member of a European Federation is an old Gaullist one on which he elaborated at great length in his war memoirs. It was an idea taken up with even greater enthusiasm by Pompidou, who saw in Spanish entry not only a means of strengthening French influence in the Mediterranean but also that of balancing, with the entry of Britain, Denmark and Ireland into the market, the preponderant influence of the Northern States. For both men it was a primary French diplomatic objective to get postFranco Spain into Europe quickly.
A similar view has always been taken by President Giscard. That is why he carefully cultivated the friendship of Don Juan long before Franco's death; that is why he was one of the few Heads of State to attend his Coronation; and that is why in a discreet manner, going from hunting lodge to hunting lodge, he has become one of the small circle of the King's most influential advisors. Nevertheless when Giscard arrived in Madrid the other week on a carefully prepared State visit he found the atmosphere distinctly chilly. And chilly it remained throughout — until the final banquet when Giscard at last ended the suspense and committed himself to supporting the Spanish bid. The words he used were: 'As far as France is concerned the issue is settled.' Settled? Not by a long chalk.
What Giscard seemed to forget when he uttered these words was that under the constitution, French approval of any extension of the Common Market requires either a Parliamentary vote on a bill to that effect or a referendum. At the moment it would be risky for him to go for a referendum and even riskier to try for a Parliamentary majority in favour of Spanish entry. Opposed to the project in the National Assembly are the Communists, the bulk of Socialists, and ironically enough in view of what I have said previously the Gaullists led by Jacques Chirac. The Communist opposition is easily explained. They have their agricultural clientele which fears Spanish competition. The Socialist attitude is equally easy to explain: they have their strongholds in Southern and South-Western France where the wine, fruit and vegetable growers are up in arms against Spanish entry. But what is one to say of the Gaullists, and especially M. Chirac? Has the Gaullist vision shrunk to the point where market gardeners loom larger than French diplomatic interests? It would seem that M. Chirac is getting a bit overwrought in his grudge fight against the President. He has now attacked Giscard on every conceivable front — on his economic policy, on his foreign policy in general, on his African policy and now on
his support for Spain's entry into the Community. This seems to leave him with little
choice but to either shut up or put his vote where his mouth is — that is to say, to bring the Government down. Needless to say there is no likelihood of his doing either.
What he is doing is vote-catching in preparation for the Presidential elections in
three years time, and if that means dis carding the mantle of De Gaulle and descending to the level of a Poujade as on the Spanish issue then he will do so. The least that can be said of it is that it is not an edifying spectacle.
It is even less edifying when one looks a little more closely into the Spanish case. From the narrowest viewpoint of economic interests alone, France has a great deal more to gain from Spanish entry than it can fear to lose by it. Not all French agricultural interests, far from it, are opposed to Spain's admission and those who are like the wine growers of the South West, are themselves unlikely to survive —Spanish competition or no Spanish competition. In this particular case, too, the Italians should be more worried than the French about Spanish rivalry, who in any case are much more threatened by Italian wine than they are ever likely to be by the Spanish product. Then again, French industry far from being hostile to Spain is positively drooling at the mouth at the prospect of the disappearance of Spain's tariff barriers. Of course when the chips are down Spain's entry will be duly approved by the French Parliament. The whole question is whether it will be grudgingly done or handsomely done. If it is grudgingly done, the Spaniards will never forgive the French and the ones who will profit from this situation will be France's partners and rivals in the Common Market.
Of course Chirac befogs his basic objection to Spanish entry — that it might hurt some French agricultural interests—with all sorts of statesmanlike sounding arguments about his fears for the future of the Common Market. He claims, for example, that Spanish entry would inevitably be followed by that of Portugal and Greece, and that such a further enlargement would render it 'politically incoherent'. It would then become, he argues, little more than a free trade area. It could be argued, of course, that the Market is already 'politically incoherent' and is already little more than a free trade area. Indeed such coherence as it has derives almost entirely from FrancoGerman cooperation at the top. The rest, including Britain, are on the sidelines. What we have is in effect a `directoire a deux', instead of the `directoire a quatre' which De Gaulle suggested in his famous conversation with Sir Christopher Soames. Much joy it has brought us to have poured scorn on that proposal.
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