Orchestrating Europe (Text Only). Keith Middlemas

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СКАЧАТЬ Joseph Luns, saw British participation as essential to ensure the primacy of NATO and to keep a check on French ambitions. This was in stark contrast to the French position, that Britain would have to make a separate membership application to the Political Community, if and when it came into existence. Throughout the spring of 1962, this divergence of opinion became an ever greater source of antagonism among the Six. Meantime, the British themselves had begun to take a more active interest in the Fouchet negotiations, which, after all, coincided with Macmillan’s preferences for Europe’s organization. In April, at the Council of the Western European Union, Edward Heath made a long statement indicating Britain’s desire to participate directly in the discussions. Coming at a crucial stage in the Fouchet negotiations, his announcement had the effect of rallying Belgian support for the Dutch position. Spaak now declared that he would not sign any proposed treaty until after Britain had been admitted to the EEC. The negotiations were then formally ‘suspended’, and the Fouchet Plan was abandoned.

      The failure of the Fouchet Plan represented the first of many political complications to emerge among the Six in the 1960s. Moreover, by stiffening French resistance to British intervention in continental affairs, it had a marked effect on the atmosphere of the Brussels negotiations on British accession. Four weeks after the suspension of the Fouchet discussions, de Gaulle held a press conference in which he defended the Fouchet Plan and delivered one of his most scathing attacks on European federalism. His response to Belgian and Dutch intransigence was to proceed with negotiations on a political treaty with Germany alone. The summer and autumn of 1962 were marked by a number of high profile meetings and state visits. This process culminated, a mere fortnight after the collapse of the first British membership application, in the signature of the Franco-German Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation – a treaty which has also been described as a ‘bilateral version of the Fouchet Plan’.

      Despite these external threats, and perhaps partly even because of them, the early years of the EEC were startlingly successful. In 1958, it had yet to start its day-to-day operations and still had to recruit its staff. Although its president, Walter Hallstein, was welcomed in Washington almost as if he were a head of state, his position as the head of the secretariat of Europe’s smallest and newest international organization meant he was virtually shown the tradesmen’s entrance in the United Kingdom. Nonetheless, the Commission quickly became a formidable force in European politics. This was partly because it was remarkably well-staffed. For example, Walter Hallstein himself had been involved in European affairs since he had led the German delegation in the Schuman Plan negotiations. Sicco Mansholt, an ardent federalist, had served as an agricultural minister (not usually a post renowned for its length of political tenure) for over a decade. Hans von der Groeben had already served as his country’s representative to the High Authority of the ECSC. Each of these men recruited highly skilled and experienced personal staffs.

      Its success, however, was more than a question of personnel. At an organizational level, the Commission was quickly able to establish its own priorities and, still more importantly, to implement them. This, in turn, was facilitated by the compactness of the Commission itself, as evidenced by its small number of portfolios. Only later, when the EEC was merged with the ECSC and EURATOM, did its focus become blurred; it was then further diluted by the addition of new commissioners to satisfy new members in 1973. It is also undeniable that political factors played an important part. Early support from the Americans had certainly helped to increase the legitimacy of the new organization. Additionally, foreign policy challenges, an area in which the Rome treaties had given the commission an important role, presented themselves in the form of GATT trade rounds and in preparing the response to UK initiatives. Finally, the favourable economic climate provided new opportunities in the shape of an accelerated creation of the common market and thus created new areas for the Commission to exercise its influence at an early stage.

      I once asked a senior official with a lifetime of service in the Commission, what the difference was between an inter-governmental organization, with a large and efficient secretariat, and a supranational community, controlled by a Council of Ministers (often voting with unanimity) and a large and efficient Commission. He replied that often there was no discernible difference, especially if there were sources of disunity within the group. However, if the political or economic constellation were favourable, a supranational community could respond more quickly and effectively to issues to which an inter-governmental agency might not be able to respond at all. He argued that the first Hallstein Commission was fortunate to find itself in such a situation.¹¹ Small, uncertain, and untried, the new Community soon found itself basking in a golden age, and inspiring a whole branch of theorizing among political scientists into the bargain.

      The Six’s first step in economic integration was the building of a customs union for industrial goods. All tariffs and quotas on trade between members were to be reduced gradually to zero and a Common External Tariff (CET) installed. The first 10 per cent tariff cut on intra-EEC trade took place in January 1959 and, according to schedule, bilateral quotas were multilateralized, while those quotas that were extremely restrictive (less than 3% of output) were expanded. At the same time, the benefits of the tariff cuts (other than those on tariffs already below the planned CET) were extended unilaterally to other GATT members. This was partly to anticipate criticism in the GATT that the EEC would develop into a closed organization and partly to cool the row that had erupted after the failure of the free trade area negotiations, which would have been aggravated had the Six immediately begun tariff discrimination against the rest of Europe.

      The next two tariff cuts of 10% each were to take place in July 1960 and December 1961. Hallstein suggested accelerating the schedule, ostensibly to take advantage of the favourable economic climate but also to accentuate the EEC’s own identity at a time when there was still an active interest in subsuming its commercial arrangements into a wider European grouping. As a result, in May 1960 the Council of Ministers decided to proceed, on schedule, with the July reduction but to make the next cut a year early, in December 1960. Similarly, in May 1962, the Council decided that the state of the economy allowed the 10% cut scheduled for July 1963 to be brought forward a year. Due to these accelerations, tariffs between the EC members were dismantled completely by July 1968, two years ahead of schedule.¹²

      The creation of a customs union by the Six also implied a common level of tariff protection towards the outside world. This too was completed ahead of time. The first problem was to define the tariff itself. The CET should have been calculated as the unweighted average of tariffs in four areas, but for a number of products (mostly in the semi-manufactured and petro-chemical sectors) this formula was opposed. Due to lack of time in the Treaty of Rome negotiations, these goods had been consigned to List G and left to be decided by January 1962. Because of the need for a complete tariff schedule before entering GATT negotiations, this operation was completed by March 1960 and the outcome, moreover, was far less protectionist than had originally been anticipated.¹³ Because the timetable of internal tariff cuts had been accelerated, so too was the realignment of national tariffs. In January 1961 and July 1963, the margin between national and projected rates was reduced by 30% each time, and the gap was finally closed in July 1968.

      Although the Commission boasted that the level of the CET was moderate and its incidence considerably narrower than the British tariffs, Paxton stresses that ‘in practice, the common external tariff as originally fixed was higher and more restrictive than the average incidence of the 1957 tariffs.’ Germany had already in the mid–50s been concerned that their first post-War tariff had been fixed at too high a level and had already engaged in some unilateral reductions of their own. The Dutch too had been alarmed at the upward revision of tariffs on semi-manufactured goods especially. Neither country had been happy with the upward drift in protection that the CET implied. They therefore welcomed the call in 1958 by US under-secretary of state, Douglas Dillon, for a new multilateral tariff round in GATT. So too did the Commission. The Treaty of Rome had constituted a single bloc from four, already large, trading entities. Under GATT rules which applied to negotiations between major suppliers, this enhanced its importance and its international recognition, especially in relations with the United States. Moreover, since the Treaty also allocated the Commission a specific role in preparing СКАЧАТЬ