Common Market: The Line Forms

When the six charter members of the Common Market opened up the Treaty of Rome five years ago and invited fellow European nations to participate, they were snubbed. “We really didn’t expect anybody else to want to join,” said one of the original negotiators. “We were tired, and it was a rainy night, so we just sat down and slapped something on paper.” But so staggering has the success of the Common Market been that these provisions for membership are now required reading in the capitals of every nonmember nation in Europe.

Over the past three years, eleven nations have formally applied to join the Market in some way. They break down into three groups:

> Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, and Ireland, which have applied for full membership.

> Greece, Turkey, Spain, and Portugal, which have bid for associate membership as a prelude to full membership when their underdeveloped economies can carry out all the obligations entailed.

> Austria, Sweden, and Switzerland, whose applications for associate membership insist on the preservation of their neutral status.

Beyond these eleven, Israel is already dickering with the Six for a general trade and tariff agreement, but not membership; Iran has indicated that it would like the same; and Communist Yugoslavia has hinted that it would like some sort of economic arrangement—one of the best testimonials yet to the success of the Market.

After Britain. Having navigated the shoals of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ meeting, Britain is once again free to plot its now inevitable course into Europe. Barriers still remain, mostly guarantees for Britain’s domestic agriculture and tariff concessions for Common wealth raw materials. But so firmly is Britain committed to joining the Market that a draft agreement is expected before the year’s end. With the tangled British question all but settled, the other nations are queueing up with increasing urgency. First in line are Norway and Denmark. Though the Six grumble that both applicants could have come in at the start and are only applying now because they are feeling the economic pinch, both nations should slide easily into the Market in Britain’s wake.

Ireland’s application is another matter. Though Ireland was the first nation in Europe to apply for full membership, the Six have serious doubts about its economic strength, want the Irish to undergo a period of economic muscle building as an associate member before playing in the Market’s big league. First nation to conclude a treaty with the Six, Greece will become an associate member Nov. 1.

The Greek agreement is likely to provide the basic pattern for other underdeveloped countries. Under its terms, the Six gave Greece—whose per-capita income is only one-quarter of Luxembourg’s, the Market’s smallest member—22 years to catch up to the Market industrially, at the end of which, if all goes well, it can make the transition to full membership.

Because Turkey’s economy is too weak even for associate membership, the Six are reluctant to consider the Turkish application in the immediate future, instead last week agreed to pump $300 million into Turkey as the first step of a program to make that nation strong enough for association.

Untenable Neutrality. No applications have touched off more controversy in Brussels than those of Spain and Portugal. Liberals and socialists in the Six argue that their admission into the Market would only strengthen the dictatorships of Franco and Salazar. Furthermore, they say, as long as Portugal holds on to its rebellion-torn colony of Angola, the Market cannot even consider its application since it would alienate the existing association of former African colonies.

But more pragmatic officials contend that if Franco and Salazar were to accept the Market conditions, the process of freedom in both countries might in fact be accelerated. “In a sense,” says one Eurocrat, “we would be setting laws here in Brussels to which the people could appeal.” Net result of the dispute: postpone consideration of either application several years at least.

The thorniest problems are connected with the three neutrals, Austria, Sweden, and Switzerland. Ironically, they are—except for Britain—the best qualified of all the applicants by virtue of their industrial maturity and traditional trading patterns with the present Market nations. But their insistence on concessions to en sure their neutrality has met with rebuff. Last week, at Switzerland’s “audition” in Brussels, the Six listened coldly and with sharp disappointment to wholly unrealistic Swiss demands for the right to conclude trade agreements outside the framework of the Market, to be free of the Market’s agricultural restrictions, and to be able to opt out of the Market in the event of war. What amazed the Market nations was that in trying to separate economic questions from political questions, the Swiss showed a woeful lack of understanding of what the Common Market was all about.

The Six see no reason why they should dilute the Market concept by granting the neutrals greater economic and political leeway than is available to present partners or new applicants, willing to go the whole way. Only Austria’s neutrality elicits any sympathy, because it is an enforced provision of the 1955 Austrian peace treaty between Russia and the West. But as long as Austria insists on “sailing in the wake of Switzerland,” the Market maintains it can be treated no differently. Yet eventually some sort of agreement will have to be reached between the Community and the neutrals. Perhaps, in the emerging Europe formed by the success of the Market, neutrality will become an untenable position.