The EEC Is Alive and Plodding

...To soften the transition shocks, the EEC has created a plethora of equalization funds, compensatory charges and development payments...

...What is surprising, and probably the source of much of the gloomy talk about the EEC's survival—aside from the truly slow pace of progress toward political unity—is the widening gaps between the rates of growth of the countries that make up the Community...

...But the forecasts proclaiming the end of the EEC come mostly from the visiting-fireman variety of journalist, and from politicians who feel more important trying to "save democracy for the next generation" than working to save the average housewife three cents on a loaf of bread...

...Less tangibly, but perhaps most important psychologically, ideas now travel freely throughout Western Europe...

...A great deal more time and money will be required before an Italian dairy farmer can produce as efficiently as a Dutch one, or conversely, a Mosel wine can be priced to compete with a Chianti...

...For Americans who have always lived in a vast land where state lines, at worst, prohibit the transport of women for immoral purposes, it may be hard to conceive of the Europeans' heady feeling of widening horizons...

...The EEC is basically a customs union, allowing goods and services of the member states to move freely across national boundaries while presenting other countries with a common tariff barrier...

...Faced with this rebuff, the five decided Thorn and Ortoli would not go to San Juan...

...Still, between 1970-75 the economic positions of Britain, Italy and Ireland declined significantly compared to the EEC average, while those of Germany, France and Belgium continued to advance...

...Yet according to the latest annual report of the EEC Regional Fund, published in June, this has not had the desired effeot...

...Yet it is the routine work of economic management that has made the Common Market valuable to the 260 million people in its nine countries...

...The situation was exacerbated by the sudden oil-price increases following the Middle East war in October 1973...

...All of this has produced a search for new ways to reduce inequalities among the nine...

...In any case, barring an international tragedy of cataclysmic proportions, it is hard to imagine today's West Europeans would go back to their old fenced-off national existences...

...Those concerned about preserving national sovereignity charged the Belgian with being too ambitious...

...But it is hardly surprising that agricultural problems preoccupy the EEC bureaucracy and create many of the Common Market's genuine crises...

...In practice, if one member objects to a Commission draft, the Council prefers to seek a compromise acceptable to everyone anyway...

...Those who conceived the Community believed the only practical way to tear down the political and social differences separating the countries of free Europe was to eliminate economic barriers...

...Last May, for example, the Commission proposed dividing about $800 million from the European Bank and $500 million from the European Development Fund among various countries in the Mediterranean...

...The Council of Ministers then wasted most of a two-day session as France voted down six compromise proposals...

...On July 12, heads of member governments tentatively agreed on the distribution of seats in a directly elected legislature that would replace the present one, whose members are appointed by the national Parliaments...

...As for the Puerto Rican summit flap, it is not taken too seriously here because the meeting was primarily designed to win Ford votes and because the final stumbling block was France—nothing unusual...

...True, these technocrats often despair over petty political obstacles...

...One more positive sign is the move to reconstitute the European Parliament...

...In absolute terms, the situation of the weaker members has improved...

...While recent discord may have dimmed the prospects for attaining longer-term goals, the EEC continues to plod along with the not unimportant business of running a customs union...

...By that time, it is hoped, Paris will have achieved what it wanted with the exercise and permit a solution...

...MOVING TOWARD POLITICAL UNITY The EEC Is Alive and Plodding BY ELIAHU SALPETER Having read the prophecies of the European Economic Community's impending disintegration, I set out for my assignment here with the uneasy feeling of a traveler who is not quite sure whether he is going to visit a hospital or attend a funeral...

...When the tide turned, the weaker group recovered more slowly...

...Final enactment is left to the Council of Ministers, a forum intended to defend national interests that is composed of those cabinet ministers from each member state who are directly concerned with the issue under discussion...

...The five felt that was not enough...

...The Council can pass Commission proposals by a simple majority...

...Under President Giscard d'Estaing, French obstructionism has become more selective, focusing on actions likely to make much noise and convince die-hard Gaullists that the General's successors have not betrayed his principles...

...Most important measures must be initiated by the Commission, made up of individuals appointed by the participating nations who, once installed, become the heads of the Community's independent, supranational bureaucracy...

...The EEC cannot exist indefinitely, nor can the domestic political stability of its weaker members be maintained, if the disparities in costs of production, balance of trade and standards of living remain as wide as they are today...

...others complained he was overly cautious...

...France has sought to use this tendency to harness Common Market moves to its own foreign policy designs, exasperating its partners not only on such fundamental issues as Britain's admission to the EEC, which de Gaulle delayed for years, but also on fairly minor matters like development loans for associated countries...

...Tearing down the elaborate protectionist mechanisms most European countries have built to shelter their inefficient agriculture, on the other hand, has been a very painful process...

...What I found, instead, was an organization hard at work (at a somewhat leisurely pace, to be sure), where men who believe the road to a united Western Europe leads past abandoned customs houses spend endless hours determining next month's tomato prices...

...One notable suggestion would apply a "regional development rating" to each major proposal coming before the Commission, making it possible to give priority to projects that would help solve the central issue facing the Community...

...Europeaness is becoming more and more a part of the consciousness of the younger generation...

...The splits among EEC members underscored the weight of the United States at Nairobi, and the need for European unity to bring about a coordinated Western stand...

...The doom-sayers tend to forget that the Common Market is only in the opening phase of its proposed evolution from an economic grouping to a federation of states...

...Urgent consultations followed, and it was decided that Luxembourg Prime Minister Gaston Thorn, the present Chairman of the EEC Council of Ministers, and Francois-Xavier Ortoli, President of the EEC Commission, would also be invited to the summit...

...But people of my generation remember that even after World War II a few hours' trip could involve several tedious—if not out-right unpleasant—border checks...

...On the level of the individual, meanwhile, the union has meant reduced prices and a truly international selection of merchandise in the average supermarket or department store...

...Enter France: It was willing to promise consultations on the Puerto Rican summit, but would not institutionalize the obligation...

...Indeed, one of the best indications of the European Community's strength and resilience may be the patience members have shown in bearing the Cross of Lorraine...

...Tindermans also recommended that one member of the European Council be delegated to handle relations with the United States...

...Ford invited the four big EEC countries: Germany, France, Britain, and Italy...

...Similarly, critics claimed his "two-tier progress" concept, which calls for the richer countries to pursue economic and monetary unity faster than the others, would create two classes of members in the Community...

...defenders contended the program was realistic and would enable the wealthier nations to help the advancement of the poorer ones...

...Additional aspects of the report were challenged by ongoing events...

...They accepted without notifying their five smaller partners—Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands—who were offended...

...The report further urged that the EEC, in searching for "a new world economic order," should appear united at multilateral negotiations...

...other members, such as Britain and Italy, had to be bailed out by their EEC partners...

...In addition, the Common Market is currently heading toward complete harmonization of domestic tax systems and is groping toward joint development and employment policies...

...The two countries should receive the same allocation, it insisted, opposing the 20 per cent higher figure stipulated by the Commission for four times more populous Turkey...

...A more comprehensive approach was provided in the famous report Belgian Prime Minister Leo Tindermans submitted to the EEC last January 1. Its thesis is that achieving a European political unity depends on eliminating economic divisiveness—and reactions to the report point up the Community's prospects as well as its problems...

...Each morning at any kiosk in my neighborhood I can pick up Le Monde of Paris, the Guardian of London or half a dozen German dailies...

...Besides its usual fuss about the funds for Israel (all of $40 million over five years, at standard bank rates) to demonstrate its devotion to the Arabs, Paris decided to champion the Greek cause against Turkey...

...When President Ford called for an economic summit in Puerto Rico last June 27 and 28, for instance, Giscard used the occasion to show he would not do anything that might be seen as "giving up French sovereignty...

...Citizens of the EEC can travel, take up residence and work anywhere in the Community...

...Although the reverse would seem more logical, the procedure is supposed to encourage the Council to accept the recommendations of the bureaucracy (representing the overall EEC interest...

...The ready interchange has created a new atmosphere that is being felt by hundreds of thousands: by the manager of the apartment building who goes for her annual holiday to the Adriatic, where her Belgian son-in-law has a job in a local branch of a French company...

...Each year the Community invests hundreds of millions of dollars in regional development...

...The administration of these programs, and of the immensely complicated external tariff barriers, has given rise to an army of "Eurocrats" who regulate the flow of commerce within the Community as well as to and from it...

...It is divisions between the two that are largely responsible for current day-to-day difficulties...

...amendments, however, require a unanimous vote...

...France, believing any ties hurt the franc, abruptly quit the "snake...

...The European Coal and Steel Community, launched in 1952, was the first step in this direction...

...Tindermans proposed that the "snake" of linked EEC currencies be consolidated by joint action in monetary, budgetary and short-term economic policies...

...Formal ratification seems fairly certain and will be an important step toward greater political unity...

...All nine members, they argued, should agree to consult regularly about such external situations...

...Toward that end, he urged shifting resources from the richer to the less prosperous regions and transferring "competences" (a gentle euphemism for national authority) from individual governments to Community bodies, including the European Parliament...

...Viewed in perspective, though, these seemingly negative developments have a positive side...

...The "snake" not only survived France's de-coupling but Paris—apparently ready to profit from letting the others repair the damage it did—has begun making noises about coming back "under more stable arrangements...

...Paradoxically, even the revived "regional nationalisms" of the Scots, Bretons, Basques, and Corsicans may mean that the traditional nationalisms are weakening and the trend toward de-emphasizing old boundaries is irreversible...

...Some of the young here, too, may take the new mobility for granted...

...If France's behavior cannot destroy the EEC, nothing ever will," a high-ranking Eurocrat explained...

...Aware that national rivalries often have nonmaterial roots, they nevertheless felt an intermeshing of economies would create joint interests and co-operation transcending frontiers...

...Six years later the EEC and the European Atomic Energy Community were established by two treaties signed in Rome, and in 1967 the three associations were brought under one governing mechanism...

...Nonetheless, the Commission has been asked to produce still another draft on the subject for the next Council meeting...

...This consists of the Commission, the top administrative and executive body, and the Council of Ministers, the highest political decision-making organ...

...Europe, said Tindermans, must develop common economic agricultural, industrial, energy and monetary policies...

...Germany, the Benelux countries and, to some extent, even France managed to keep their heads well above water...

...Confrontations of that kind naturally capture the headlines...

...Subsequent remarks made about the French in the Council corridors are not printable even in this permissive age...

...yet in responding to President Ford's Puerto Rican summit invitation, the EEC couldn't reach a compromise on its represention...

...but at the UN Conference on Trade and Development held May 5-28 in Nairobi, the Community was divided and some of the members, in fact, undercut the positions of their partners vis-a-vis the Third World countries...

...by the Danish farmer whose produce is now marketed all over the Community...