Western Europe: Out-of-Joint Projects

“The path to joining Europe — or even to cooperation in joint projects — is not smooth,” sighed Britain’s Guardian. It was the understatement of the week. With lofty hauteur, Charles de Gaulle has heaped scorn on every effort by Britain to nudge its way into the Common Market. It is even getting difficult for the French and the British to stay partners in the ambitious set of joint aircraft-production schemes so loudly heralded over the past couple of years.

Last week there were two distinct rebuffs from Paris. The first involved British, French and West German plans to build the subsonic, short-range Airbus, which would carry 250 passengers and go into service by 1972. By agreement of the three governments, Britain was to build the craft’s engine. Trouble is, the envisioned Rolls-Royce model is still on the drawing boards, while the U.S.’s Pratt & Whitney already has a suitable engine in the test stage. So France’s largest manufacturer of aircraft engines, SNECMA, announced that it would exercise its option to build the Pratt & Whitney engine. Seemingly, that was merely a hint that Rolls-Royce had better get cracking on its own model, but behind it lay the unmistakable fact that French and German aircraft companies are itching to switch to the U.S. engine.

“Purely Financial.” Far more of a shock was Charles de Gaulle’s decision to pull out of a Franco-British project to build an advanced variable-geometry fighter as a European counterpart to the U.S.’s swing-wing F-lll. As the British government publicly interpreted it, the move was made on “purely financial grounds,” but the whole truth is that the French have already gone ahead and developed their own variable-geometry fighter, the Dassault Mirage 3G, which is due to make its maiden flight this month. Presumably undisturbed is the ambitious joint project to build the Concorde, a supersonic transport scheduled to go into commercial service in 1971. But to the British, this is less important than the now abandoned swing-wing scheme, which Defense Minister Denis Healey had characterized as “the core of our long-term aircraft program.” Besides depriving Britain’s ailing aircraft industry of one of its most advanced projects, the pullout may further aggravate the country’s balance-of-payments problem; Britain, which has already placed a $300 million order for 50 F-llls, now may be forced to buy more of the U.S.-made fighters as substitutes for its own. As De Gaulle is only too well aware, that would strengthen one of his pet arguments for keeping Britain out of the Common Market: that Britain is overly reliant for its defense needs on the U.S.