The View from the Summit

We are not seeking to submerge our national personalities, but to combine them into a European personality that will make its weight felt.

--Edward Heath in Paris

FRENCH President Georges Pompidou struck almost the same theme when he declared that "Europe is a reality, with its own personality." Yet, in their two days of meetings last week, the political leaders of Europe demonstrated that the Common Market is still beset by the divisions that have handicapped it since its founding in 1958. France is determined to maintain a loose confederation of nation states while the other members are, in varying degrees, committed to the creation of a Europe that is united politically as well as economically.

As the Common Market summit ended, the divisions were still apparent. A 3,500-word communique, produced after a prolonged bargaining session that forced delegates to cancel out of a planned farewell party for them and some 400 guests, proclaimed the leaders' common objective: European union by 1980. The nature of that union was not specified. The Dutch, heading the supranationalist contingent within the European Economic Community, even threatened to veto any progress toward monetary union unless it was accompanied by sufficient advances in political integration. The Belgians finally produced a compromise--that the Community leave it to the EEC Commission and the European Parliament to devise plans for political union--but set a three-year deadline for a blueprint that even Pompidou could accept.

The summit also marked the entrance of Britain into Europe's troubled suprapolitics. Just two days before the Paris meeting, the House of Lords was notified of Royal Assent to the treaty specifying the terms of British entry into the enlarged EEC--along with Denmark and Ireland--on Jan. 1. As Prime Minister Heath had put it: "In this new partnership we have a chance as a great people, as a formidable nation, as a shaper and molder of the modern world, to get back into action."

The French press hailed the summit as the largest gathering of political notables since the 1919 peace conference that produced the Treaty of Versailles; but the Champs-Elysees remained bannerless and unfestive beneath a brilliant autumn sky. As delegates began to arrive at the spruced-up Hotel Majestic, from which the Viet Nam peace negotiators had been temporarily evicted, 1,500 uniformed policemen lined the nearby streets; plainclothesmen huddled in elegant doorways looking for all the world like pimps for the fun girls of Montmartre.

As if arriving delegates needed to be reminded that Europe faces a Japanese economic challenge as well as one from America, they were obliged to pass a huge Toyota showroom whose beaming proprietors happily threw open their doors and handed out free drinks and sandwiches for any spectators who stopped to watch the leaders of Europe assemble.

Each of the top echelon of leaders had been honored on arrival in Paris by the playing of his country's national anthem--each, that is, except the President of the EEC Commission, Sicco Mansholt. In French eyes, the able Mansholt does not rank with the heads of government--and besides, what music would you play for him, since the EEC has no anthem. During the planning stage of the conference, Mansholt had been scheduled for only the least important of four official luncheons --which ranged from heads of government at the Elysee Palace to a lunch for the foreign ministers at the Louvre, down to a catch-all meal for "others" at the Hotel George V. Only after some adroit lobbying from Brussels was Mansholt upgraded from the George V to the Quai d'Orsay.

In his opening statement, President Georges Pompidou declared that the links between Europe and the U.S. "are so close that it would be absurd to conceive of a Europe constructed in opposition to it." He added: "But the very closeness of our ties means that the European personality must assert itself on equal terms with that of the United States." As a practical matter, he reiterated, France believed the dollar should again become convertible and that the price of gold should be increased; at $38 an oz., he said, "no one is willing to sell, and everybody wants to buy."

The Community's leaders were openly concerned that the summit would be so unproductive as to damage even further the Common Market's reputation among their own constituencies and particularly among the young (TIME, Oct. 23). It was true enough that the deliberations were not the stuff that dreams are made on. Nonetheless, the leaders took a notable step toward creating a common currency by agreeing to set up a central authority that would have the power--and the funds--to help member states defend the stability of their currencies. It would also have the power to coordinate the narrow ranges within which the European currencies are allowed to fluctuate (a process that Europeans sometimes colorfully describe as keeping "the snake in the tunnel").

Inflation. As expected, the delegates made an important concession to West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, who faces a close election next month. They agreed that the Common Market countries should take joint action against inflation, thereby, in effect, assuring the West German electorate that inflation is a European problem and not merely a German one. Specifically, the members enjoined their Finance Ministers, who will meet next week in Luxembourg, to prepare a program for combatting inflation on a Community-wide basis.

Although inflation is one of Europe's hottest political issues, the Common Market in the long run will be judged more by its success in improving the quality of European life. Underlining the need to "appeal to the imagination of future generations," as Denmark's new Prime Minister, Anker Joergensen, put it, members agreed on the need to delve into social issues that the Market has not faced before: problems of employment, consumer protection, the environment, the role of multinational corporations, and the treatment of Western Europe's approximately 6,000,000 "guest workers." Besides the long-term effect that such a program could have on the attitudes of younger Europeans, it might well provide an immediate boost to the political fortunes of Brandt and Pompidou, both of whom are stuck at the moment with unfulfilled domestic promises of social reform.

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