The Ten Commandments

As spring came last week to the parks and plazas of Brussels, the Common Market's Council of Ministers greeted it by breaking new ground--then retreating into a springlike languor that seemed to rule out any further progress. The new ground was the adoption of an unprecedented common policy under which the Six will coordinate their national economic policies in an effort to halt Europe's dangerous inflation. "This is the first time," said Council President Henri Fayat of Belgium, "that the Six have ever discussed so frankly and so profoundly their common financial problems." But when it came to giving profound thought to the problems facing the Common Market in the trade negotiations with the U.S. that begin in Geneva next fortnight, the ministers were neither decisive nor very frank.

The U.S. had hoped that the ministers, meeting in Brussels for the most important gathering since the December crisis that threatened to cripple the Market (TIME, Dec. 27), might respond warmly to the U.S. concession in February to cut tariffs more than the Europeans on some items. The ministers barely discussed the matter at all, took no action. Any hope of reaching a common European grain price--which the U.S. wants established so that grain can be part of the Geneva bargaining--was once more dashed by the West Germans, who insist on higher prices than the other five in order to protect their inefficient farmers. With this lack of progress, the Geneva negotiations are sure to get off to a slow start, and will probably drag on wearily for many, many months. Some Europeans feel, in fact, that Charles de Gaulle does not want the Geneva parley at all, and would be happy to see it collapse because of German intransigence over grain.

Slow as they were to make any progress in dealings with their friends, the Marketeers managed to agree on action against their common enemy: inflation. Almost everyone had a crack at watering down the decisive anti-inflation plan drawn up by Economics Vice President Robert Marjolin, but the final program is still amazingly strong. It morally binds each of the Six to take such rigorous steps as levying new taxes to restrain consumer spending if it rises too fast, strengthening credit restrictions, holding wage rises to productivity gains, curtailing luxury housing, and maintaining liberal import policies to keep local prices down. The ministers even agreed to present their national budgets to each other for examination and discussion, and to limit yearly budget increases to 5%. The words "economic plan" never came up, but with the new program, the first joint economic policy ever voted by the Six, the Common Market clearly took a long step toward a centralized planning system.

Moved by the significance of the new program, and doubtless by the arrival of spring, French Finance Minister Valery Giscard D'Estaing composed a poem to mark the occasion. Giscard, who once donned a V-necked sweater to give his own anti-inflation program a soft, living-room sell over French TV, outlined the battle against inflation in the form of the Ten Commandments:

1) Thou shall not worship inflation,

Its thought or its creation;

2) Thou shalt inflation fight

With all thy strength and might;

3) Thou shalt open frontiers maintain

Whatever thy import drain;

4) Thou shalt each budget rise

At five percent revise;

5) Thou shalt new taxes generate

Thy deficits to eliminate;

6) Thou shalt when deep in debit

Ask only long-term credit;

7) Thou shalt credit control

As a durable goodly goal;

8) Thou shalt allow incomes to grow

At rates both equal and low;

9) Thou shalt new housing constrain.

Particularly the penthouse vein;

10) Thou shalt consult thy partners

quickly If thy payments balance grows sickly;

Finally thou shalt honor thy father

and mother

If these ten leave time for the other!

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