THE COMMON MARKET: BURIAL OR REVIVAL?

WHENEVER kings come together," Goethe wrote, "it is always bad news." This week the heads of the six nations of the European Economic Community hope to prove the poet wrong when they meet in the 13th century Hall of Knights in The Hague. The two-day summit meeting could prove of critical importance in determining the future of the Common Market, and indeed of all Europe. Since the Market was created twelve years ago, it has not merely lost momentum but has also shown signs of coming apart.

The business of the "kings"--in reality the President of France, the Chancellor of West Germany and the Premiers of Italy, Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg--is to determine how badly they want this economic union to endure and what they should do to revive its impetus. There was a great air of uncertainty over the direction the talks would take. As he processed credentials for the 500 newsmen attracted by the spectacle, one Dutch official wryly inquired last week: "Is it to be a burial or a revival?"

The man chiefly responsible for the Market's state of disarray will not be at the huge oval table. Charles de Gaulle saw the EEC as little more than an expediter of French policies and was determined to keep it thoroughly subservient to the six governments that brought it into being. On two occasions De Gaulle vetoed British membership. During one seven-month period, he ordered his ministers to boycott all meetings of the Six to demonstrate his displeasure over what he considered supranational power plays by the EEC Commission. De Gaulle became a symbol of obstinacy, but he also provided a convenient screen for the other members, who disagreed too about the way in which the Market was being shaped. Publicly, the five deplored France. Privately, they occasionally scuttled Market proposals that collided with their own particular national objectives.

Bureaucrats and Butterbergs. The result is that the Common Market today is still little more than an imperfect customs union--which is precisely what France's President Georges Pompidou sneeringly called it while serving as De Gaulle's Premier. Joint policies on money and transportation have never been worked out. Uniform tax reforms were supposed to be completed by the beginning of 1970, but Italy and Belgium have airily announced that they will be unable to meet the date.

The most stubborn problem of all is agriculture. Seventeen months ago, a new agricultural policy was introduced that called for a single six-nation market with uniform prices for most farm products. Hailed as the Common Market's finest achievement, the policy has not worked as well in practice as it did on paper. French devaluation and German revaluation shook the price structure. Instead of eliminating marginal farmers, the Six have kept them in business through a tangled network of supports and tariffs.

The main beneficiaries are the farmers of France, who chiefly benefit from the artificially high prices set by the Market. The big losers are the Germans, who agreed to foot 28% of the agricultural bill in return for a wider market for their industrial goods. The resuit of the subsidies has been a dizzying upsurge in production and the creation of mountainous surpluses--including a 425,000-ton "Butterberg" and 8,000,000 tons of wheat. Merely to store the surplus farm products costs the Six $400,000 a day.

The French are wary of any change in agricultural policy and are determined to take that matter up before anything else. Certainly Pompidou has enough political problems to handle without having to worry about a bigger rebellion among farmers. Consequently, he is anxious to come away from The Hague with a guarantee that the subsidy system for French farmers will be continued. But West Germany is urging that other accommodations be worked out. The summit delegates will probably compromise by extending the present system for one more year while they work out something better.

The Great Federator. After agriculture has been disposed of, the French may then be amenable to discussing the issue that many Eurocrats count as the most important confronting the summiteers: expanding the EEC beyond its present membership. Applications are pending from Britain, Ireland, Denmark and Norway. Of the postulants, Britain is obviously the most important, and sentiment is growing among ordinary Europeans for British admission. A recent Paris Match poll showed 52% of Frenchmen saying yes. Officials at the Quai d'Orsay let it be known that the French were going to The Hague "to begin the process of getting Britain into the Common Market."

The British themselves, on the other hand, have begun to have second thoughts. Two weeks ago, a Times of London poll found 54% of them opposed to joining the Common Market. Because trade balances have improved and the pound is stronger, Britain has emerged from its slough of economic despond. "We no longer face the challenge of Europe cap in hand, " Prime Minister Harold Wilson told a cheering Labor Party meeting in Brighton two months ago. "Europe needs us just as much as, and many would say more than, we need Europe." What worries the Prime Minister and other Britons, for one thing, is that membership would bring an immediate and politically damaging rise in consumer prices. Butter costs 48-c- a pound in England today and eggs 50-c- a dozen; in Paris, butter costs $1.08, eggs 84-c-.

Britain has other reservations about joining a union in which it has sought membership for so long. One is the fear that Britain will be drawn into a political assembly in which ancient forms and traditions will disappear. Actually, the prospect is remote. Political union was the goal toward which Jean Monet and other Pan-Europeans sought to steer the Common Market more than a decade ago. The threat of the Soviet army perched across nearby borders made planners anxious to achieve union by any means. Today, however, the Russian threat appears to have diminished markedly; so has the possibility of war between old rivals, particularly France and Germany. These new realities have very much lessened the pressures for political confederation.

Bigger than Japan. Political union is plainly a long way off, if attainable at all, but what of a closer economic union? The Soviet threat has been largely replaced by the American economic challenge, and Europe's economy may one day face eclipse unless it works out some response. The most logical response would be a vigorous, creative economic union that really did look beyond the narrow interests of French farmers and Walloon miners. Such a union, with Britain added to the present Six, would mean a Common Market of nearly 240 million people. Japan has managed to become a leading commercial power--and a growing political force--with less than half that many.

Though British membership in the Market is probably two or three years off at least, British leaders are already promoting this point of view. John Davies, outgoing director general of the Confederation of British Industry --whose U.S. equivalent is the National Association of Manufacturers--summed up the feeling recently in a farewell speech to his members. "The postwar history of our relationship with continental Europe," said Davies, directing his remarks across the Channel as well, "is one of missed opportunities, and not only on our side. The longer we postpone trying to develop as a continent rather than as a series of increasingly inadequate nation states, the more remote will become the time when we shall really exercise the influence in the world to which our experience, our humanity and our genius entitle us."

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