Moving on Tiptoe Toward Ties

The man who wasn't there, Charles de Gaulle, also dominated the deliberations of Europe's other trade bloc last week. Meeting in Copenhagen, the seven members of the European Free Trade Association--Britain, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, Austria and Portugal--argued over how hotly to pursue their long-range goat of closer trade ties with the Common Market. The big question: Would a major effort only backfire by stirring the French to cause more trouble inside the European Economic Community?

Nobody lobbied harder for a full-dress conference of the two trade groups than the Danes. Foreign Minister Per Haekkerup hopped from table to table at luxurious dinners, turned up at hotel suites all around town for whispered consultations with other delegates, even moved from his seat as conference chairman to intervene vigorously in the debate. The Common Market's crisis, argued Haekkerup, could lead to a major reshuffle that would produce closer economic and political ties throughout Europe--and EFTA should nudge things along. Reason for the Danish push: though EFTA as a whole runs a chronic trade deficit with the Common Market, the problem is particularly nettlesome for Denmark, which depends on West Germany as a major market for its farm produce. Since the creation of the Common Market, that outlet has shriveled.

Most of EFTA's other members remained cool to the idea of strong action. Said Swiss Economics Minister Hans Schaffner: "It would be like asking a couple in a divorce action to adopt a child." At week's end the delegates settled for a mild expression of readiness to talk whenever the EEC is ready, authorized Haekkerup to press his views with the ambassadors of Common Market countries in Denmark (which he immediately did). That was a timorous step. Still, it showed that EFTA's members, no less than the EEC's "other five," agree that Europe should keep striving to tear down tariff barriers and escape from the trade-poisoning atmosphere of economic nationalism.

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