High hurdles for Europe
`Acceptance by the new members of the objectives already decided upon by the Community and, subject to such minor adaptations as might suggest themselves, of the regulations adopted to date, would not suffice to ensure that the tasks to be accomplished in the years ahead would be carried through. It will also be neces- sary to decide whether the undertakings foreseen by the Treaty or already accepted by the existing members would be adequate to guarantee the effectiveness of an enlarged Community or whether, on the contrary, some more specific commitments will not be required both of the existing members and the new entrants.' This somewhat sibylline pronouncement was contained in the Brussels Commission's memorandum on the application of Britain and other EFTA countries for membership of the Common Market last October: and ever since then the Commission has been busy trying to spell out more precisely what it means.
Three specific recommendations have so far emerged. The first is that any attempt by Britain to secure a reduction in the Community's current prices for foodstuffs must be firmly resisted. The second is that the system of 'keys' for relating member- countries' contributions to the central agricultural fund to the size of their re- spective gross national products must not be used by the British to scale down the contributions they might otherwise be ex- pected to make. Both of these recommen- dations presumably fall within the scope of 'acceptance . . . of the regulations adopted to date'. But the third recommen- dation demonstrates the Commission's evident conviction that 'some more specific commitments' are also needed. For it is a demand that applicant countries should be required to join with the existing members in resisting all proposals for greater flexi- bility of exchange rates.
If these conditions—and no doubt others like them—were to be insisted upon then entry into the Common Market would become, to adapt- Mr Peter Shore, 'an option to be left alone because it did not suit us.' Community food prices must come down as a corollary of enlargement of the Market, for it would be foolhardy in the extreme for a British government to assume that it could secure reductions after it had committed itself to contribute massively to the underpinning of the exist- ing price structure. If the founder- members are entitled to relate their con- tributions to farm finance to their respec- tive gross national products a British government could hardly accept that it was not entitled to do likewise. And as for the call for a pledge to rigidly fixed ex- change rates, it assumes a degree of in- tegration of economic policies which does not even exist within the Community, let alone between it and the rest of the world.
It may, however, be argued that the Brussels Commission is simply adopting a tough bargaining posture in advance of the horse-trading: if Mr Wilson can play hard to get, why should not the officials in Brussels play slow to offer? Unfortunately there are substantial reasons for believing that the Commission means what it says. For the bureaucrats in Brussels have never genuinely believed in the desirability of en- larging the EEC. This is hardly surprising. At the lowest level they have a vested interest in the bureaucratic status quo: they have carved out their individual empires, and cannot be expected to relish the pro- spect of having to share them out again with a whole host of English-speaking Johnnies-come-lately. On a more spiritual plane they genuinely fear for the cohesion of a larger and more unwieldly grouping.
These factors, coupled with the thinly- veiled anglophobia of Professor Hallstein, explained the underlying hostility of the Brussels machine to the first British approach in 1961-2. But today there is an additional motive. For years the Com- mission has been eclipsed and humiliated by General de Gaulle. Now the General has departed, and the Commission sees an opportunity which it is all the more de- termined to seize because it is convinced that it will not come round again. The im- petus towards integration was halted and reversed by General de Gaulle: if it cannot be recovered now it may be too late. Furthermore the British application can be put to good effect. By raising the hurdles which we are invited to leap the Commis- sion can hope simultaneously to scare us away and to force its existing patrons to accept surrenders of sovereignty which they would otherwise reject.
The reaction to these manoeuvres on this side of the Channel could hardly be more short-sighted. The Foreign Office goes blithely on its masochistic way, de- termined to show the bureaucrats of Brussels that, so far as we are concerned, the higher the hurdles they erect the better opportunity we have to stretch our legs. Meanwhile its ultimate political master craftily lays his plans in an attempt to tilt the electoral balance decisively in Labour's favour. The impression is created that a Labour government, notwithstanding its decision to apply for entry into Europe, can be counted on to 'whip the applica- tion back again' once it has renewed its mandate.
If we go on this way, then whoever wins the election Europe (including Britain) will be the loser. Mr Heath may still believe— his speech in the recent Common Market debate suggested that he did so believe— that the approach which was blocked by General de Gaulle in 1963 will work in 1971. But even if he does not find it neces- sary to chase Mr Wilson for cover as the election battle develops he is surely an optimist if he thinks that public opinion will thereafter promptly accept more far- reaching surrenders of sovereignty than any the Six themselves have accepted to date.
Those who genuinely favour enlarge- ment within the Community now have an opportunity to perform two signal services for the future of western Europe. First, they should insist that the negotiation of British entry cannot take place against the background of an election campaign in this country, and must be deferred until the next Government has taken office. Second, they should insist that a matter of this magnitude must be settled between govern- ments and cannot be decided in the context of rules laid down by the Brussels Com- mission to suit its own convenience. It might be ironic if the French government were now to perform this service for us all : but it would be entirely logical that it should do so.
Once the temptation to Mr Wilson and others to play politics with Europe had been removed it would be entirely honour- able for all the major British parties to acknowledge that the ultimate decision on the Common Market is indeed, in Mr Shore's words, 'one that the politicians alone cannot take.' This does not mean, as Mr Shore and no doubt Mr Wilson would like it to mean. that the politicians should stand aside. The political parties have an obligation to give a lead to public opinion, as Mr Macmillan and his govern- ment exerted themselves so successfully to give a lead in 1962. Whether public opinion can be led to accept the terms of entry when they are known only time can show. What is certain is that no lead will be forthcoming in 1970.
Previous page
