The Summit: Details in Place of Dreams

THE delegates from six Common Market countries and the three that will join them in January will gather for a summit meeting at Paris' Hotel Majestic this week with a conspicuous lack of pomp. No parades will march up the Champs-Elysees; no balls will be held at Versailles; there will be nothing to equal the splendor the French lavished within the past year on the visits of Leonid Brezhnev and Queen Elizabeth. Indeed, the only glitter will come from a modest gala in the Elysee Palace's gilt-and-tapestry Salle des Fetes on Thursday night.

French President Georges Pompidou has no plans to meet any of the 135 delegates at Orly Airport; that chore has been assigned to lackluster Premier Pierre Messmer and Foreign Minister Maurice Schumann. "Everything is being done," explained a government spokesman, "to ensure that this will be strictly a working meeting," an attitude that squares with Pompidou's crisp observation that the European Economic Community has "already drunk the champagne" of British entry.

In fact the French, who are both the instigators and the vacillating hosts of the EEC summit, seem to regard it the way a calculating bridegroom looks on a marriage ceremony: It would be easier to elope, but what would everybody say? When asked why the meeting was being held at all, Pompidou justified it on the "negative" basis that "not to hold it would be an act with grave consequences." He added, with scarcely more enthusiasm, "I hope that when we are all around the table, a European flame will glow a little brighter, and France will not seek to extinguish it."

Nonetheless, the prosaic preparations for the summit, foreshadowing the entry of Britain, Ireland and Denmark into the EEC on Jan. 1, accurately reflect the current boredom with the whole idea of a united Europe. Little more than a decade ago, Spanish Philosopher Salvador de Madariaga grandly envisioned the day when "Spaniards will say 'our Chartres,' Italians 'our Copenhagen' and Germans 'our Bruges,' and will step back horror-stricken at the idea of laying murderous hands on it." Then there were dreams and drama; today there are mostly details.

Until a year or two ago, the Common Market was widely regarded as the great economic engine that would bring about higher standards of living for all Europe. That has indeed happened; yet today a substantial percentage of Western Europeans, particularly the young, regard the Market with a combination of apathy and antipathy. The Norwegian electorate's no to EEC membership last month reflected a growing attitude that the technocrat-heavy organization is impersonal and even a bit dehumanizing, a bureaucracy that will make government even more remote from the individual than it is already. Thus, in an ironic turn of history, leaders of nine nations will meet in Paris to discuss the expansion of a united Western Europe to little or no public applause.

Nor will the larger destiny of Europe receive much attention at the conference. Instead, the delegates to the Paris meeting, like politicians everywhere, will concentrate on the art of the possible. West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, who faces an extremely tight election fight at home, needs a commitment from his EEC partners that inflation--a common European problem--be tackled by all member states together. He will undoubtedly get such an assurance. The Italians are also primarily concerned about economic objectives. What they want most is a program for assisting underdeveloped regions within Europe's own borders --notably Italy's own impoverished South. The question of such aid was a prime topic between Italian leaders and British Prime Minister Edward Heath during his visit to Rome two weeks ago.

Perhaps no European leader looks forward to the Paris summit with more enthusiasm than Britain's P.M. "One is either European or one is not," says Heath. "My home is on the coast, and any clear day when I look out, I see France." Domestically, Heath is in a fairly strong position at the moment despite Britain's continuing inflation and trade union opposition to his industrial-relations bill. He will be in even better shape if he manages to bring off a voluntary wage and price agreement that is currently being negotiated with the Confederation of British Industry and the Trade Union Congress.

Like the Italians and the Irish, Heath favors a regional-development policy reinforced with EEC financial assistance to aid depressed industrial areas (such as Britain's Northeast, as well as the West of Ireland and the South of Italy). Like the Germans and Italians, he takes the position that economic policy must develop simultaneously with monetary policy. So far he has resisted French pressure to pin him down on exactly when the still floating pound sterling will be returned to a fixed parity. Heath is committed to such a step by January in any case; if he gets his wage-price agreement, thereby strengthening the pound, he will probably return it to parity sooner.

As for the French, they seem content for the moment to be the acquiescent, if slightly reluctant hosts for this week's meetings. It is unlikely that they will raise, even in a pro forma way, their earlier demand for a political EEC secretariat with headquarters in Paris. In his letter of invitation to heads of government, Pompidou struck the theme of his own attitude toward the EEC at the moment: "Consolidation." As one French diplomat put it, "With the new members coming in, we will have a period of digestion of what we have before us rather than an ordering of more."

In fact, EEC technicians in Brussels were already at work drafting the conference communique last week. Its contents were supposed to be a deep secret, but, as usual, they quickly leaked out. (According to one Common Market wisecrack, the difference between a secret document and a confidential one is "half an hour.") The draft communique affirmed the members' support of moves toward greater economic, monetary and political integration, called for international monetary reform and regional development planning. It also favored collective action against inflation and greater emphasis on programs of social reform. "We have always found it best to write communiques before high-level meetings," explained a senior EEC official. "The leaders like to have a document ready for their consideration."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.