Lure of the Common Market:

...Moreover, Kennedy's maladroit offer of support during the Algerian revolt, plus the suspicion that the Central Intelligence Agency may have had contact with the rebel generals, weakens his bargaining position...

...Britain would find this very difficult to accept...

...The matters he referred to were "satisfactory arrangements in respect of the interests of British agriculture, our fellow members of the Commonwealth and our partners in the European Free Trade Association...

...Moreover he does not seem, until now, to have taken the Commonwealth or Outer Seven countries fully into his confidence...

...So Britain would have to insist that the Common Market agree to a treaty of association that wouldn't involve these countries politically—an arrangement that the Inner Six has always been reluctant to envisage...

...Thus, there is not much point to the current argument in Britain about whether it would be wise to accept the Treaty in principle, so long as Britain insists on her three preconditions...

...This applies to neutral Finland as well, which plans to become an associate member of the Free Trade Association in July...

...There is no doubt that they were seriously disturbed by the rumors that Britain was planning to join the Common Market unconditionally...

...The astonishing economic recovery of France under the guidance of economic expert Jacques Rueff has weakened this objection, and some people believe that French industry would now accept certain compromises...

...Meanwhile, there is everything to be said for discussions between experts to explore means by which the economic obstacles to agreement may ultimately be overcome...

...At a recent meeting of the Conservative Members of Parliament from farming areas, the Government was warned that it might lose 80 seats at the next election unless it continued to protect British agriculture on the present scale...

...But the main reason for Kennedy's new line is a reasonable anxiety lest a European Union without Britain should, as de Gaulle has often hinted, develop hostility to the Anglo-American group inside the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and even aspire to be a Third Force in world affairs...

...Broadly speaking, the Commonwealth countries want to protect their industries and have free trade in agriculture while the European countries want exactly the reverse...

...Some argue that such an offer would at least "put France in the wrong" and lead its partners in the Common Market to exert effective pressure for a change in her policy...

...It is even less realistic to believe that President Kennedy will win over de Gaulle during his visit to Paris this month...

...In my view this would be far too high a price to pay, though there is some evidence that Macmillan may have had some such deal in mind when he talked in Cambridge, Mass., of building a "nuclear partnership...

...In the early stages French opposition was based mainly on the fact that since the Rome Treaty was drafted to give France special economic advantages, almost any change in it would damage its interests...

...The same rumors led the French and German governments to believe that they need make no compromises since Britain would offer to join it on their terms...

...It would be difficult to overcome this by associating the Commonwealth as a whole in some way with the Common Market, since the two groups' economic interests are contradictory...

...But as Macmillan himself has said, formal negotiations between governments must wait until there is a clear will to agreement among all concerned...

...The fact is that the only offer which might make de Gaulle change his mind on the Common Market or anything else would be the promise oJt American help in building an efficient thermonuclear striking force for France...

...Commonwealth producers of food stuffs and raw materials are naturally appalled at the thought of losing their free entry into Britain while Britain removes all obstacles to imports from their Continental competitors...

...and the Government has pledged itself not to alter the present system of protection before the next election...

...Kennedy replied that he would be prepared to suffer some additional commercial discrimination against the United States on condition that the agreement between the Six and the Seven had a political as well as an economic content...

...The official British line is that Macmillan asked Kennedy whether he would maintain President Eisenhower's opposition to a merger between the "Inner Six" of the Common Market (France, West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg) and the "Outer Seven" of the European Free Trade Association (Britain, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Switzerland and Portugal...

...Britain's obligations to her Outer Seven partners present greater difficulties still...

...British controversy is stirred by the Lure of the Common Market By Denis Healey London The CURTAIN came down on another act in the interminable tragi-comedy of Britain's relations with Europe when Prime Minister Harold Macmillan told the House of Commons on May 9: "It is not a question of joining the Common Market...

...While Continental farmers are protected mainly by tariffs and quotas, British farmers get subsidies of $800 million a year to compensate them for the free entry of all Commonwealth and some Continental foodstuffs...

...At the moment, the French government is still presenting Britain with a harsh ultimatum: Stay out, or sign the Treaty as it stands...

...Of the three preconditions set by Macmillan, satisfying Britain's agricultural interests is at once the most explosive and the easiest to meet...

...But it would not be difficult for Britain to shift to the Continental system of protection, though the removal of subsidies would mean a rise of 2% per cent in the cost of living, with the probability of a wage spiral to follow...

...Yet Britain is bound to insist on satisfying the economic preconditions for her political commitment to the Continent, and it looks as if Macmillan is at fault for failing to make clear to Kennedy how stringent these preconditions are and how formidable the obstacles to meeting them...

...While Denmark now wants to join the Common Market, and Norway would do so reluctantly if Britain and Denmark led the way, Sweden, Switzerland and Austria believe their neutral status would be compromised by joining the Common Market, since it is a political as well as an economic community...

...Kennedy's problems with the French leader over NATO and the French atomic bomb will be difficult enough without raising an issue which does not directly concern the L.S...

...To some extent, it may be inspired by the traditional American obsession with political federation as the cure for Europe's ills (an obsession which is markedly weaker in Atlanta than in Boston...

...Kennedy responded by promising to use his influence with President de Gaulle to obtain French support for the necessary economic changes in the Rome Treaty...

...There is little doubt that Macmillan did in fact give some such assurance to the President, though there is some dispute whether he or Kennedy took the initiative...

...Prime Minister Macmillan's frank statement ended a year of rumors that Britain was considering entering the Common Market as a full member—rumors which culminated in a spate of semi-official leaks from the Washington talks between Macmillan and President Kennedy to the effect that Britain had finally decided to accept the Treaty of Rome (which established the Common Market) as the basis of future negotiations with the Continent...

...The Rome Treaty talks only of "a political community," and de Gaulle has already declared that he sees this as a "Europe of nations" which might ultimately evolve into "an imposing confederation...

...Many British experts think that, in default of a general agreement between the Commonwealth and the Common Market, Britain would have to compensate the Commonwealth countries bilaterally for any losses they suffered...

...There is little reason to believe that anyone inside or outside France will put pressure on de Gaulle over the Common Market as long as the Algerian problem is unresolved...

...In this respect his position is even stronger since the Generals' revolt revealed him as the only alternative to civil war or military dictatorship...

...At this point, according to the rumors in Whitehall, Macmillan said that Britain was prepared to accept the political commitments of the Rome Treaty providing her special economic problems were met...

...Although the French government's views of the political future of the Common Market are closest to those of Britain, de Gaulle is immutably opposed to Britain's joining the Common Market on any terms, since he sees it as the indispensable basis for French greatness in a world too long dominated by the AngloSaxons...

...But this is not a debating society or a morality play...

...The managerial revolutionaries who run the organization from Brussels, supported by the Dutch and German governments, want it to develop into a complete political federation...

...Most of the other Continental governments are by now convinced that the Common Market cannot become a federation so long as de Gaulle's ideas determine the policy of France...

...But de Gaulle's political opposition is far less easily overcome, and so long as he persists in it French negotiators will have little difficulty in preventing agreement on the economic changes in the Rome Treaty which Britain wants...

...Here, however, we come to the crowning irony of the present situation...

...The fact is that real progress on mending the economic division of Europe will have to wait until the Algerian problem is closer to a solution...

...Before that moment comes nothing can be gained and much may be lost by striking heroic attitudes and overdramatizing the dangers which might ultimately follow a failure to agree...

...The political implications of the Common Market are the most obscure—and potentially the most intractable—of the obstacles to British membership...

...If you mean that we should sign the Treaty of Rome and that is all, then that is quite impossible and we have never even considered it with our allies...

...What we have to decide is whether it would be possible to associate ourselves with membership of such an organization, subject to a protocol or agreement reserving those important matters mentioned a moment ago...

...Ever since the Rome Treaty was signed, attempts to bridge the gulf between the Common Market and the European countries outside it have shattered against the rock of French intransigence...

...This shift in America's attitude to the European problem is held in London to justify and explain the change in Britain's attitude...