Correspondents' Correspondence
Correspondents' Correspondence BRIEF TAKEOUTS OF MORE THAN PERSONAL INTEREST FROM LETTERS ^.v^ERCOMMUNICATIONS RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS. Britain Heads the EEC Brussels—Through sheer coin-cadence...
...Since England's official name—the United Kingdom—puts her at the end of the list, Foreign Secretary Anthony Crosland will assume the organization's second most powerful post...
...He also represents the member countries in negotiations with outside interests—the Arabs and the U.S., for example...
...The remaining two, Spain and Portugal, have no such agreements...
...Now, having progressed toward democracy, they want to reap the benefits of Community ties...
...Very possibly England's dual leadership role will only underscore the divisive forces within the EEC...
...The accidental situation has everyone in Brussels talking expectantly about the "British era" of the Community...
...To be sure, tensions existed before Britain's entry into the Common Market...
...Furthermore, in a heavily "Mediterraneanized" EEC, the divisions between North and South would widen, and the goal of a truly united Europe become more distant...
...Under the EEC constitution the President is the highest official of the Community...
...But as long as an economic boom prevailed, the five stable and prosperous countries (West Germany, France, Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg) could drag along the poorer and beleaguered sixth (Italy...
...The chairmanship of the EEC's Council of Ministers rotates in alphabetical order every six months among the nine foreign ministers...
...An economically stronger Britain might also have made it easier for the Community to realize one of its deeper aspirations: the introduction of "Northern" (i.e., more progressive) political values and mores to France and Italy...
...Two of them, Greece and Turkey, have Association Agreements formally recognizing full EEC membership as their eventual aim...
...Yet by now it should be dawning on each of the Nine that combat against the deepening economic problems besetting the Community is almost hopeless without a certain transfer of national decision-making to Brussels...
...and in Council deliberations, where each minister speaks for the particular interest of his nation, the President speaks for the entire Community...
...He presides over the Comimission's weekly meetings as a sort of Prime Minister, coordinating the work of the commissioners who oversee the various Directorates (as EEC departments are called...
...Since then, London has added to the Community's troubles...
...None of them is a model of economic health or political balance...
...A narrowing of these gaps has therefore always been the EEC's declared aim...
...And even if some necessary measures are taken, the EEC's future looks bleak when one considers the pressures for expansion...
...That two citizens of one country happen to now head the organization is unlikely to solve any of these fundamental problems.—Eliahu Salpeter...
...France and Italy refuse to take serious, coordinated antiinflationary steps...
...With living standards, production costs, wages, productivity and per capita GNP varying greatly, it is difficult for the Community to achieve cohesion...
...Largely because dictatorships ruled the two Iberian countries, the EEC refused to have links with them...
...The four countries knocking on the Community's door are all from the South...
...Unfortunately, the progress toward European homogeneity achieved by the Six was halted and even reversed by the crisis following the 1973 oil price increases—and the newly arrived United Kingdom, instead of helping to pull the enlarged train as she would have some years ago, had to be pulled herself...
...Now, Roy Jenkins, former British Home Secretary, will head the Commission...
...Britain Heads the EEC Brussels—Through sheer coin-cadence the two top positions in the European Economic Community (EEC) are now occupied by England, largest of the three countries (Britain, Denmark and Ireland) to join the Common Market in 1973...
...Except for Luxembourg, representatives of the original six members have all had turns as President of the EEC Commission: West Germany's Walter Hallstein, Belgium's Jean Rey, Italy's Franco Maria MaMatti, Holland's Sicco Manshold and, in the past two years, France's Francois-Xavier Ortoli...
...It has long been an axiom that the greatest danger to the future of the EEC is the disparity in the growth rates of its members...
...But should any of these countries join the Common Market, the integration of the first nine will be increasingly difficult...
...but they are closer to Western Europe geographically, culturally and economically...
...Its ^reluctance to yield authority to the organization's central organs has placed it closer to France's fanatical and obstructionist protection of national sovereignty than to the more communal attitudes of West Germany or Holland...
...Despite Roy Jenkins' devotion to Europeanism, however, there is nothing he or his country can do to help—except, perhaps, devaluate the "green pound" whose artificially high exchange rate forces the other EEC nations to subsidize the English housewife's food bill by $1.2 billion yearly...
...Germany and Holland, for instance, will hesitate to reflate as long as Britain...
...But no one knows what good, if any, will come of this latest development...
...As things turned out, England's fiscal turmoil rendered it powerless, and the EEC's cultural and political cleavages only widened...
Vol. 60 • January 1977 • No. 3
