The Cost of Stubbornness

The most subtle and persistent nemesis of Charles de Gaulle's narrow, nationalist design for a Europe des patries are the Eurocrats--the quiet men in Brussels dedicated to creating a truly supranational political Europe atop the already thriving economic union of the Common Market Six. Ever since De Gaulle vetoed British entry into the Common Market in 1963, the Eurocrats have patiently worked to yoke French economic demands to the larger purposes of Europe, and more often than not have succeeded. Last week, as the ministers of the Six assembled in Brussels, E.E.C. President Walter Hallstein and his technicians were convinced that they had laid their best trap yet to exploit De Gaulle for the greater good.

European Treasury. For months Paris had been insisting that the provisions for a common market in farm produce be completed in time to take effect in mid-1967, a full 21 years ahead of the Rome Treaty's schedule. De Gaulle counseled haste with good reason: as the lowest-cost producer of the Six, France stands to benefit the most from free farm trade within the community, and from farm exports outside the Common Market as well. For this reason, De Gaulle has used every brutal lever at his command, including a threat to quit the E.E.C., to force upon his Common Market partners agreements so far covering three-fourths of the bloc's farm products. Recently De Gaulle has been pressing loudly for the whole hog.

Trouble was, before the last stage of farm policy could be completed, another knotty problem had to be resolved. For any policy to work, the Six must tax imports coming in from the rest of the world. The decision to put the tax revenues--which could rise to a formidable $10 billion a year--into a common fund under central control had been stalled off for years. With the need for a decision imminent, Hallstein's technicians laid their trap. Their suggestion: Why not hand control of the money over to the Eurocrats, creating Europe's first federal treasury? If that sounded too much like taxation without representation, then why not give the European Parliament--even more supranationally inclined than the Eurocrats--a hand on the cash?

High Price. This seemed to offer the speediest way to conclusion of the whole farm question, but when De Gaulle first read about the scheme in the French papers last March, he hit the ceiling. Summoning Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville and French Agricultural Minister Edgard Pisani, he demanded to know why he had not been warned about such supranational schemes in advance. They had to admit that the matter was news to them as well.

For all De Gaulle's ire, France, to step out of the snare, would have to abandon its whole campaign for swift completion of the Common Market farm plan--and the Eurocrats were certain the French would never agree to that. But a clever diplomat never says never. Last week, without a twitch of embarrassment, Couve de Murville blandly told his colleagues in Brussels that since the Rome Treaty provided until 1970 to complete an agricultural common market, France saw no reason why everyone should be in such a hurry to finish by 1967.

Having been browbeaten by French farm deadlines for so long, the other five were astounded and even outraged. Snapped Hallstein: "The obstinate maintaining of divisive internal antagonisms could make Europe the Balkans of the world." It was nonetheless a diplomatic tour de force--the one French response no one had anticipated. Even more, it was a reminder of how bitterly De Gaulle will resist creeping supranationalism. Resisting the Eurocrats' push for unity by delaying the farm plan will cost France and its farmers at least $1 billion between now and 1970.

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