te Grand Georges

If France's Common Market neighbors thought that life with President Georges Pompidou would be easier than it was with Charles de Gaulle, they had cause last week to think again. In a blunt conversation with visiting Belgian Premier Gaston Eyskens, Pompidou made it clear that where Europe is concerned, he can be as intransigent as le grand Charles. Telling Eyskens that "I'm giving it to you off the cuff, as General de Gaulle used to do," Pompidou reeled off what he saw as "numerous obstacles" to next October's Paris summit, at which the ten leaders of the expanded Common Market are to hold their first meeting.

Pompidou complained that his neighbors had paid insufficient heed to France's proposals for a common industrial policy and a coordinated approach to developing countries. But his main peeve seemed to be a lack of urgency that Europe should "find her place, her personality, her influence in the world again." Part of the remedy, Pompidou's spokesman later emphasized, would be the establishment of a Common Market political capital in non-NATO Paris--far from Brussels, which is top-heavy with economists and in French eyes tainted with American influence. "If this is not a crisis," the spokesman added, echoing his boss, "then we are not very far from one."

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