Political Fission

Western Europe's need to develop atomic energy for peaceful uses is more urgent than the U.S.'s. Within the next three years, some European nations will be facing power shortages; within the next 30 years, Western Europe will be running out of coal and will have expanded hydroelectric capacity to the limit. But though the U.S. has some 50 research and power reactors under way, Western Europe has only 14.

One reason for Europe's slow atomic progress is its political fission. Even in trying to get together, Europe has almost as many international atomic-energy committees as it does atomic-power plants.

One of them is Jean Monnet's Action Committee for a United States of Europe, which believes that the next, best step toward federation would be an atomic partnership called "Euratom," modeled on the six-nation Coal and Steel Community which France's Monnet bossed until last year. No politician, Economist Monnet has nevertheless made much political progress, claims the support of majorities in the six Parliaments concerned (France, West Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg).

Last month Euratom got a helping hand from the U.S.'s John Foster Dulles. He invited Rene Mayer, Monnet's successor as president of the Coal and Steel Community to visit Washington next month to talk up Euratom.

Last week another influential group got into the discussion. The new group is a subcommittee of O.E.E.C. (Organization for European Economic Cooperation), the outfit set up by European governments to channel U.S. aid to Europe. Mindful of objections to Euratom on the grounds that it covers too few countries and carries supranationalism too far, the O.E.E.C. committee proposed cooperation short of full partnership among the 17 O.E.E.C. nations. To include countries such as Brit ain, which is skittish about too deep involvement in continental federation, O.E.E.C. would settle for "joint undertakings" among different combinations of countries to spread their investment risks and to give Europe a more balanced atomic industry than any one nation could build alone. "Full cooperation," said the O.E.E.C. committee would "wreck the very idea of cooperation."

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