The EEC's Unhappy Birthday
GAILLARD, WILLIAM J.
AFTER TWO DECADES The EEC's Unhappy Birthday BY WILLIAM J. GAILLARD Rome When the heads of the European Economic Community's nine member governments met here last March 25 to mark the...
...The fact that European integration has done little to close the gap between the zones of high economic expansion—represented more or less by the Paris-Frankfurt-Rotterdam triangle—and less fortunate areas has been profoundly felt in most EEC countries, reactivating regional and linguistic conflicts...
...Their entry could provoke dangerous social tensions in areas of France and Italy that directly compete with them for wine and citrus fruit markets...
...The poor coverage was an indication of the EEC's condition as it enters its 21st year...
...May 9.1977 II is without a government (general elections will be held May 25...
...One reason is Prime Minister Mario Soares' hint that if his country were not allowed to join the Community, it would probably become a European Cuba...
...Collapse could still occur, however: Divisions within Labor persist, and they have been exacerbated by the country's decade-old depression...
...This project, supported mainly by West Germany and Luxembourg, would divert still more funds from underdeveloped areas to the most advanced ones...
...Only after a long and bitter debate were the other members able to convince Giscard to make major concessions on the issue...
...The "European monetary snake" was shortlived and many currencies began freely floating once more, so that now the hoped-for monetary union looks increasingly like a dream...
...Beyond these disputes inside members' borders, the disappointments of integration are manifesting themselves on a broader level as well...
...The Italians and some other members also complain that not enough resources have been allocated to help the depressed areas of the Community—Italy's Mezzo-giorno, Belgium's Wallonia, Wales, and Brittany...
...It would have a chance to become, in De Gaulle's words, "Une Europe europeene," a unified continent capable of escaping the implacable logic of the East-West blocs...
...Portugal, economically the weakest and most backward candidate, presents the toughest dilemma...
...From its inception, a French-German coalition dominated the Community, and after Great Britain entered the EEC in 1973 it was accepted into the exclusive club...
...Italy and the other five smaller members have made known their dissatisfaction with big-power hegemony in the EEC, and as a counter measure are attempting to give the European Commission more power vis-a-vis the member states...
...At a meeting in Brussels on March 28, a proposal to this end was supported by every EEC country with the exception of Britain, which vetoed it...
...In Britain, Prime Minister James Callaghan's Labor party, with the help of the Liberals, has so far managed to weather the Conservative offensive...
...As a result, the lesser countries' positions are simply not heard at most international conferences...
...Consequently, for the first time in many years the powerful DGB trade union federation is openly challenging the government...
...Spain and Greece, on the other hand, given some inevitable adjustments in their economies, will probably receive a favorable judgment from the Community...
...But political disagreements plus international economic difficulties following the 1973 Mideast War proved stronger than the pious wishes of the plan's formulators...
...their entrance in the EEC is viewed by many as the only guarantee for peaceful democratic development...
...And in a Britain preoccupied by its own national woes, accounts and photographs of the milestone did not even manage to hit the front pages...
...And the Federal Republic's image has been further tarnished of late by numerous civil rights scandals?like the controversy over Berufs-verbot, laws designed to keep political dissidents out of civil service jobs...
...This was especially apparent during the talks leading to the 1975 Lome convention that instituted a trade agreement guaranteeing the export incomes of 46 developing countries, and it seems to be the case as well in the current North-South negotiations...
...foreign ministries are looking to the recent Fiat-Libya agreement as a blueprint for more joint ventures for Arab capital and European industrial know-how...
...In 1970—a time of relative euphoria in Europe—the so-called Werner Plan launched a process that was to have created a common European currency by 1980...
...the Conservatives, Christian Democrats and Communists oppose it...
...In addition, Social Democratic Prime Minister Anker Jorgensen, despite his recent victory at the polls, is confronted with an angry trade union movement and the task of trying to maintain his precarious coalition...
...Their plight could indeed worsen, if the plan to reestablish a European steel cartel to fight competition from the U.S...
...Accepting new members was never easy—De Gaulle's veto of Britain's entry in 1963 almost killed European integration—and the problem is now even more complex...
...To admit Greece, Portugal and Spain—all Mediterranean agricultural countries—to an EEC composed mostly of industrial nations is, as Alfred Grosser explained recently in he Monde, to risk destroying "Green Europe...
...Italy has therefore advocated a profound transformation of the policy, to make it defend more efficiently the interests of European farmers...
...Since 1962, agricultural prices have been fixed at the same level throughout the EEC, and a complex system of taxes and compensations has sought to dissuade member nations from importing produce from outside...
...Through the incorporation of Spain and Greece, and possibly of Portugal and Turkey (whose candidacy has not really been given serious consideration as yet), the EEC could stand as a privileged commercial associate of the Arab world...
...The proposal might even win French approval, assuming agricultural matters do not overwhelm the debate...
...In France such areas as Brittany, the Southwest and Corsica have recently expressed—often violently—their opposition to the lack of a coherent regional policy in Paris...
...In Italy, the Socialist newspaper La Republica headlined pessimistically, "A Divided Europe at the Conference of Rome," while Milan's independent daily Corriere delta Sera announced, "In Rome, an Austere Birthday Party for a Sick Europe...
...An Italian journalist commented that Portugal thus had the choice of becoming a political Cuba or an economic Puerto Rico —that is, a reservoir of cheap labor for the rest of the EEC...
...Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Turkey are cautiously knocking at the Common Market's door...
...The result of this aberrant situation is a complete immobilization that touches all facets of Italian life...
...in the former, while the balloting April 17 left the Social Christian party of Prime Minister Leo Tin-demans in power, he will have to rule as part of a minority government...
...The country does still enjoy a low rate of inflation, but its unemployment rate has in the last few months become one of the worst in the Community...
...Against such a depressing backdrop, it is not surprising that internal tensions continue to hamper the EEC...
...Questions of voice and balance are also at the center of one of the most important issues facing the EEC as it starts its third decade: enlargement...
...Although ultimately a "Europe of the 13" will probably not be any easier to coordinate than a "Europe of the Nine" has been, at least a larger and more diversified Community might carry greater weight in dealings with the two superpowers...
...Acclaimed by some as the panacea for Europe's problems (the two branches of the Italian Parliament just approved it unanimously), and seen by others as the first step toward the democratization of the EEC's technocratic institutions, it is looked upon by a few, mainly in France and Britain, as a potentially dangerous concession to the idea of supranationality...
...Similarly, the disparity between the traditionally prosperous North of Italy and the impoverished South has grown considerably since World War II...
...This has posed grave problems to "Green Europe," the Community's common agricultural policy...
...Thorn would probably not have been so quick to censure, though, if his country did not enjoy a stability that is almost unique in today's Europe...
...Before that can even be thought about there is "Horizon 1978," the forthcoming election of the European Parliamentary Assembly by universal suffrage, to contend with...
...But because the system is based on a stable rate of exchange in Europe, today's constantly fluctuating currencies do not permit a fair and accurate adjustment of agricultural prices...
...Yes, the old story once again...
...Not only is the Common Market faced with problems that threaten to reach crisis proportions, but the individual members seem too concerned with their own political and economic troubles to worry about its survival...
...In West Germany, the liberal Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung matter-of-faotly noted the occasion in the lower left-hand corner of its first page...
...But Europe is still far from the common defense policy a truly independent course requires...
...This year, Giscard d'Estaing?apparently again in fear of supra-nationality—opposed having Commission President Roy Jenkins represent the entire Community at the upcoming London conference of the world's leading industrial nations...
...For if the Commission were to represent the Community at international summit meetings, they feel, it would reflect the views of the entire membership and assure them a significant voice...
...Denmark, for example, is experiencing the most profound difficulties it has known since World War II: double-digit inflation, a high unemployment rate and an economy completely dependent on expensive imported oil...
...Not anymore: Chancellor Helmut Schmidt's Social Democratic-Liberal alliance holds a Bundestag majority of just one vote...
...France, always jealous of its national prerogatives, realized that Jenkins' presence at high-level conferences like the London meeting would limit its own power...
...This prospect is already being eagerly anticipated on both sides of the Mediterranean...
...and, above all, Japan is adopted...
...The French daily Le Monde sarcastically summed it up with a culinary allusion: "The European dough did not rise...
...To reject their candidacy, however, is perhaps to condemn these countries to Right-wing military dictatorships...
...As Premier Gaston Thorn of Luxembourg recently remarked, "On Sunday, we make speeches on the necessity of finding common solutions to our problems and already by Monday we are again obeying our nationalistic impulses...
...Nevertheless, the 20-year-old upstart appears to be here to stay...
...AFTER TWO DECADES The EEC's Unhappy Birthday BY WILLIAM J. GAILLARD Rome When the heads of the European Economic Community's nine member governments met here last March 25 to mark the organization's 20th anniversary, the historic gathering did not exactly receive an enthusiastic play in the European press...
...Among other reasons, one thinks of the rhetorical question Gaston Thorn put to a French journalist a few weeks ago: "Do you know of any alternative to it...
...And the Northern Irish, Scottish and Welsh situations are being debated with a new urgency in the United Kingdom...
...In fact, Spanish Premier Adolfo Suarez has already discreetly mentioned to Italian Foreign Trade Minister Rinaldo Ossola the possibility of a Southern European caucus in the EEC...
...This was a major source of the dispute in Rome...
...His sarcasm reflected the divisiveness caused by Lisbon's candidacy: The Socialist and Social Democratic forces (in particular the West German, Dutch and British governments), support it...
...In the past there was always one exception to chronic European instability—the Federal Republic of Germany...
...It seems the EEC may never escape the tiaps of its own internal divisions and controversies...
...Yet that squabble was nothing compared to the more basic questions the EEC has not managed to resolve, particularly the one concerning currency...
...The latter William J. Gaillard, a new contributor, is now teaching at John Cabot International College in Rome...
...The Italian government of Christian Democrat Giulio Andreotti, as an Italian journalist has pointed out, "stands in mid-air...
...The situation of both countries contributed to the uneasy mood that prevailed at the Rome meeting...
...In France, President Valery Giscard d'Estaing's losses in March's municipal elections were the biggest suffered by a ruling party since the 1930s...
...Amid the country's most serious economic and social disorders since 1945, the ruling party has no majority in Parliament and no real opposition, for it stays in power by virtue of the Communists' abstention...
...Belgium, where once industrially-dominant Wallonia is now being left far behind by the rapid development of Flanders, provides a dramatic case in point...
...Belgium and the Netherlands are in worse political straits...
...Many Danes blame their country's 1973 entrance into the EEC for the current hardships...
...The most troublesome partner remains France, for whom suprana-tionality has been a taboo word from the days of General De Gaulle, and who refused in 1965 to let the EEC Commission manage its own funds autonomously—thus precipitating the worst crisis in Common Market history...
...Among other EEC members, the Irish coalition led by Liam Cos-grave continues to be heavily burdened by the violence in Ulster...
Vol. 60 • May 1977 • No. 10
