Britain Bucks the Community

...she was enraged by the Milan proceedings and made no effort to conceal the intensity of her feelings...

...The specific goal is to accelerate the process of economic union and simplify procedures for working out joint foreign policy positions, thereby making the Common Market far more effective and influential than it has been to date...

...Prime Minister Thatcher denounced the practice of launching complicated new schemes before old ones had been fully exploited...

...Although the aggrieved British are opposed to wiping out the veto entirely, they also recognize that it could prove very damaging to Community purposes and have quite vigorously advocated limiting its use: Thatcher went to the Milan summit bearing a draft gentleman's agreement that would have allowed more majority voting on important controversial issues...

...In immediate terms, there is deep concern here that the accession of Spain and Portugal will aggravate the Community's troubles...

...Attaining such unity requires strong direction, of course, and the French and Germans, whose postwar reconciliation has kept the peace in Europe for 40 years, may see themselves as ideally suited to provide it...

...Often, too, her voice takes on a shrill tone in response to challenges—a habit that makes her preachments harder to tolerate calmly...

...Her press secretary, Bernard Inghams, described her fury as a "total volcanic eruption...

...At any rate, she certainly intends to use them to block all attempts to do so...

...In addition, their levels of economic development were not strikingly different, so providing relief for distressed regions in the Community did not pose a formidable challenge...

...Besides, these days, in the wake of the criminal boorishness of British soccer hooligans visiting abroad, Britain's standing is so low among Europeans that Thatcher's fury is bound to benefit the Continental leaders...

...The British objected strenuously...

...Her anger notwithstanding, Prime Minister Thatcher could find she simply has to go along...

...Thatcher's position is not without foundation here...

...Pressures for agricultural subsidies, which consume the bulk of the budget, will become all the more irresistible...

...France and Germany, the prime promoters of European unity after 1945, therefore decided tliey must try to prevent the movement from bcNorman Gelb writes regularly for Thf Nfw Leadfr on British affairs...

...But then only six nations were involved, and they all had the same outlook and aspirations...

...Indeed, this has already been evident in the repeated bickering about the EEC's Common Agricultural Policy, and in Greece's vetoing a condemnation of the Soviet shooting down of Korean airliner 007 last year...

...Thatcher was not merely upset...

...Upon inducting Spain and Portugal, the Community will comprise 350 million human beings, a population far larger than that of either the United States or the Soviet Union...

...Perhaps worse, three fifths of the Spanish and Portuguese citizens entering the Community will join those in parts of southern Italy who have the lowest living standards in Western Europe, and their needs will have to be met...

...Nor do they appreciate threats—for example, Thatcher's warning last year that she would disrupt the workings of the Market if Britain's budgetary relations with it were not sorted out satisfactorily...

...Once the Iberian countries have been inducted theEEC's excessive farm acreage will jump by yet an additional 30 per cent...

...Attacking the Germans and French in particular for the "lost opportunity" at Milan to streamline Community operations within the existing agreement, she ridiculed the notion that holding meetings could solve Europe's problems...

...Some English observers think the Germans and French are engaged in a conspiracy of sorts, a view reinforced by their failure to reveal their intentions before presenting their proposal...

...Nonetheless, she maintained that states must retain the right to protect what they see as their vital national interests...

...Integration, though, is very much on their minds...

...Mitterrand and Kohl, beset by domestic tribulations, could benefit politically at home from the dramatic EEC gambit, even if it never really got off the ground...

...While public opinion in the six founding EEC nations overwhelmingly favors greater unity, many Britishers object in principle to being part of the Community...

...Here in London, the Cabinet is suitably cowed by her imperious style and attitudes, but French President Francois Mitterrand and West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl do not take kindly to harangues...

...Today, Margaret Thatcher is trying to persuade her Continental counterparts not to get too excited about the concept...

...Her current frustrations do not overly distress the two men...

...When the leaders of the 10 count ries t hat now belong to theEu-ropean Economic Community (EEC) gathered in Milan at the organization's June summit, a majority supported a Franco-German proposal calling for a major conference later this year to revise the Treaty of Rome and thus relaunch the Community with new vigor and determination...

...Of the six original signers (Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany), several believe the Market has grown unwieldy as it has grown larger—and by year's end, when Spain and Portugal are officially inducted, membership will have doubled to a dozen...

...The Prime Minister has a knack for antagonizing others...

...The London Times has even warned that continuing ob-structiveness might "goad our partners into signing some new [EEC] treaty which would leave us out...

...That state of affairs has been totally transformed by the EEC's expansion to the point where it includes nations as unalike as Greece and West Germany, Portugal and Denmark...

...Starting in 1986 the southern tier is likely to enjoy vastly increased influence...

...Up to now, the northern tier nations have dominated the Common Market's proceedings...

...Krakatoa has nothing on it...

...And that would be disastrous for Britain...

...Initially it was reasoned that there could be no real progress toward a united Europe if its constituent parts had to be dragged kicking and screaming in directions they did not want to go...

...In fact, no British official could survive long in politics after openly agreeing to surrender the ultimate sovereignty of the Mother of Parliaments to a bunch of foreigners, and that is exactly what the abolition of the veto right iniplies...

...coming bogged down in national differences by together proposing a revision of the Rome Treaty...

...With a majority of the Community indifferent to her distress, the price of resistance may turn out to be much too high...

...In view of these impending shifts and their attendant uncertainties, the British, when they overcome their outrage, are baffled by the decision of West Germany's conservative government to advance a plan for eliminating the veto at the very moment old EEC members should feel compelled to retain every protection of their vital interests...

...They range from some diehards in Thatcher's Conservative Party to a notably large and vocal group in the Labor Party Opposition—whose delegates to the European Parliament in Strasbourg have just defiantly elected an anti-Market activist as their leader...

...Despite the advice of a few intrepid aides, sheeannot easily resist the temptation to lecture even her fellow heads of government...

...The key to their approach is eliminating the provision that permits each participating government to veto policies it finds unpalatable...

...Bonn's action was especially remarkable in that it came just a few weeks after Germany invoked its veto for the first time to scuttle an arrangement that would have cut the Community's agricultural subsidies slightly...

...If unity could be achieved, the Common Market could finally develop into the long-heralded economically powerful third superpower—and would no longer be dependent on America for military protection...

...But there is much more than personality friction to the EEC's difficulties...

...Furthermore, she now asserts that no matter how many conferences may be proposed or new treaties framed, the fact that veto rights currently exist means that they cannot be voted into oblivion...

...Economically hard-hit localities in the north—in France and Belgium, as well as Britain—will be less free to draw upon the organization's limited funds for industrial development and welfare in depressed regions...

...Consequently, among the founding six, there is at present a strong feeling that failure to take the changed situation into account will inevitably doom the Community to endless wrangling over economic issues and paralysis on foreign policy initiatives...

...Moreover, the European Parliament, controlled by centrists and Right-wingers, will be subject to a Left-of-center majority...

...But the French President and the German Chancellor—and Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi, who lent them strong support—may after all be aiming at something rather less nefarious than London suspects...