Le Brushoff

Two days after some 50 of the world's nations agreed to the biggest slash of tariff barriers in the history of world trade, France's Charles de Gaulle appeared before a crowded press conference to make the statement that, as far as he was concerned, liberalization had gone far enough. It was his intention, De Gaulle announced, to see to it that the European Common Market continued to restrict its own special trade privileges to its six original European members.

De Gaulle's appearance was his first before the press since Great Britain had formally applied for entry into the Common Market, and the tensions and expectations were high. France's five partners in the Common Market wanted Britain in, and the British were optimistic that De Gaulle would not repeat his 1963 veto. Foreign Secretary George Brown told Parliament two weeks ago: "We expect to get in." Gaullists had even been circulating the word that De Gaulle would not impose another veto.

It took De Gaulle just 20 minutes to demolish the hopes of Britain and his own Common Market partners. In words and tone that were more severe than when he vetoed the British the last time, De Gaulle raised every hurdle he could think of against letting the British in. "For our part, it cannot be, nor was it ever, a question of a veto," said De Gaulle. The problem was rather, he added slyly, how to surmount the obstacles to British entry that Prime Minister Harold Wilson's own "great clearsightedness and deep experience had characterized as formidable." De Gaulle made it clear that he will oppose British entry and. for that matter, that he takes a dim view even of negotiations. It was one resounding non--or, as the London Express put it in Franglais: "le brushoff."

Haughty Dismissal. On technical grounds, De Gaulle objected to Britain's imports of cheap foodstuff from the Commonwealth nations, to its restrictions on the export of capital, and to the role of the pound as a reserve currency. Adopting the rules of the Common Market, particularly the agricultural rules, could ruin Britain economically, said De Gaulle. He further objected to tying the fluctuating pound to the now solid currencies of the Common Market members. He insisted that the Market partners would invariably be caught up in the pound's fluctuations and haughtily dismissed as jeux d'esprit--mental exercises--Prime Minister Wilson's assurances that Britain would never ask the partners to come to the pound's rescue.

At heart, however, De Gaulle's main objections to British entry were political. He could understand, he said, why Britain had at first refused to join the Common Market: because it "is not Continental, remains involved with the seas beyond" and "is tied to the United States by all sort of special accords." De Gaulle feels that the British see themselves as a world power rather than as a European power--and would therefore pose a distinct threat to France's current dominance of the Common Market. Letting the British in, he said, would force "the Continentals to renounce forever the making of a Europe that would be European."

At Their Peril. Given French self-interest, there was some logic to De Gaulle's view. Britain's entry would make the Common Market's eventual goal--the political as well as economic unity of its members--more difficult to achieve. British entry would probably be followed by the entry of some EFTA nations and would thus both destroy the exclusivity of the Six and almost certainly lead to what De Gaulle called "numerous revisions" in the charter. De Gaulle fears that British entry might, in fact, be the first irretrievable step toward allowing the whole world in on the Common Market's free-trade advantages, thereby expanding the market into a sort of super Kennedy Round in which all trade barriers everywhere would be thrown away.

De Gaulle thus chose to pilot the Common Market down the narrow channel of European protectionism rather than onto the broad ocean of economic cooperation. The economic theories that have intrigued and invigorated the Western world ever since the end of World War II have mostly pointed to precisely the condition of universal trade that De Gaulle seems to fear.

"Those who resist change," said a disappointed Prime Minister Wilson last week, "do so at their own peril."

No Reservations. For its part, Britain intends to press right ahead in the hope that it can at least get negotiations going. Though De Gaulle spoke of British "conditions" and "reservations" about entering the Common Market, Britain's application was intentionally drafted as the simplest possible document, without a single reservation annexed. Despite the delay that De Gaulle can enforce, Britain considers its entry into the Common Market an inevitability; Charles de Gaulle is, after all, 76, and the British reason that his successor must be different, as were the successors of Napoleon I and Napoleon III. The British are so confident that they will eventually join that British leaders are urging farmers and industrialists to begin making preparations and adaptations that will be necessary for the tie-up. The British figure that they have a few years in which to wait and prepare--but not much more.

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