A Time of Paralysis

Western Europe's prosperity is the result, as much as anything else, of the reduction over the past few years of commercial barriers between its countries. Though most of the Continent is split into two giant trading blocs--the six-country Common Market and the seven-country European Free Trade Association--trade among members of each bloc and even between the blocs has climbed to levels scarcely dreamed of only five years ago. Europe should be eagerly pressing ahead to whittle down the remaining roadblocks to greater trade and prosperity--but it is not. It is stalled in a growing paralysis of decision making that has potentially serious consequences not only for Europe but for the rest of the free world.

Last week Charles de Gaulle made it clear that France intends to remain the major cause of that paralysis. Declaring that France has no intention of surrendering any sovereignty to the Common Market, he in effect closed the door to the sort of Common Market that Europe has envisioned--one that would have its own decision-making body, its own treasury and its own supranational laws. Deftly adding insult to injury, De Gaulle heaped scorn on the Eurocrats, the architects of the Common Market, by referring to them as "a technocratic, stateless and irresponsible clique," and to their plans as "a project removed from reality." It is "conceivable and it is desirable," said De Gaulle, that the Common Market get rolling again--but he predicted "a delay the duration of which nobody can now estimate." "Voil`a pour le Marche Commun," said De Gaulle--so much for the Common Market.

Throughout Europe, both within the Common Market and outside it, a sort of ennui and despair has settled over the economic tasks that remain to be accomplished. Items:

> The Market has been so stymied since the French boycotted its policy-making council in Brussels in June that it has not yet figured how to carry out a scheduled 10% year-end cut in its internal tariffs and, more important, has come to a complete standstill in the vital task of formulating a farm price-support policy that is acceptable to all its members. Without the farm agreement--as De Gaulle indicated last week --the Market cannot make even minimal progress.

> The U.S.-inspired "Kennedy Round" of negotiations in Geneva, attended by 70 nations, faces a long and frustrating delay at best and a lingering death at worst because the deadlocked Common Market cannot present proposals (due this week) for cutting duties on farm products imported by the Six. The U.S. insists on this condition before it will agree to cut industrial tariffs. Aimed at the deepest international tariff reductions in history, the Kennedy Round is going exactly nowhere.

> The European Free Trade Association (EFTA) has been thwarted in its crucial attempts to set up negotiations with the Common Market for lower duties on specific goods. When the EFTA council meets next month in Copenhagen, its leaders expect to report sadly that the possibilities of bridge building between the rival trade blocs have evaporated.

The European elections--both scheduled and potential--double the difficulty of ending these impasses. Britain's precarious Labor government, preoccupied with saving the pound, lacks the political and economic base to spur European negotiations and inspire EFTA, of which Britain is the reigning member; furthermore, it may soon find itself facing an election at home. Reinforcing the pound's defenses, the U.S. and nine other countries last week agreed on additional (but unspecified) short-term credits for sterling. Though the speculation-fighting arrangement came at a time when the pound was already gaining strength, one nation made itself conspicuous by refusing to join the common effort: France.

While West Germany's election next week should make little difference in the country's external policies, it has focused the energies of German leaders on campaigning rather than on the Common Market, made them reluctant to face the issue of farm price supports for fear of offending the farmers. France's December presidential vote promises a thaw only if, as seems unlikely, De Gaulle chooses not to run.

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