The Grand Disillusion

By the time Henry Kissinger takes the oath as Secretary of State, only a few months will remain in what he once optimistically proclaimed as the "Year of Europe." So far, there has been al most no progress toward the goal he set for this year: a redefinition and reaffirmation of the principles binding together the Atlantic community. Part of the delay has been caused by Western Europe's own increasing disunity. Despite the unprecedented ease with which Western European nations send goods across each other's borders, the Euro pean Economic Community seethes with some of the deepest discontent in its 15-year history.

Most alarming is the steady deterioration of relations between Paris and Bonn. It flared into the open this month when Jacques Chirac, France's Minister of Agriculture and a close confidant of President Georges Pompidou, complained that "I am concerned by the way that Germany is turning away from Europe." West German Chancellor Willy Brandt attempted to cool the exchange, dismissing Chirac's remarks as the mutterings of a low-level official. But some of the Chancellor's colleagues have privately retaliated, charging that "the French are suffering from gaps of logic."

Such bickering has exacerbated the strained relations between Pompidou and Brandt. It is an open secret in Paris that Pompidou distrusts Brandt's government. He worries that it is more concerned with its Ostpolitik policy of normalizing relations with the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe than with solving the problems of Western Europe. A Pompidou aide muses: "The EEC is confining for Germany. What would be the German reaction in five years if the Soviets offered them reunification?" The French answer their own question. The Germans "would pack up their dossier and return to Bonn," drop out of the Common Market and become a "neutral" as the price for getting back East Germany.

Brandt's aides retort that the German government has no intention of turning neutral, nor could it economically afford to leave the EEC. The real culprit, they say, is Paris, whose obfuscations and petty legalisms have stalled progress in the EEC for so long that many West Germans have grown irritated and disillusioned.

Especially galling to Bonn is French opposition to a reform of the Market's Common Agricultural Policy. Already West German payments to the agricultural fund, mostly used to subsidize French farmers, exceed $1 billion annually. "The goal was to achieve monetary and economic union by 1980," says a West German official. "Now, seven years from that goal, where are we? The British and the Germans are paying for French agriculture. That is all --and not enough." Remarked German Foreign Minister Walter Scheel last week: "This objective [of union by 1980] will never be achieved if each of the interested parties says: 'L'Europe, c'est moi.' "

It was hoped that the British entry this year into the Common Market --blocked for twelve years by the French--would inject a renewed sense of purpose that would encourage a compromise between France and Germany. But now, according to The Netherlands' Prime Minister Joop den Uyl, "there is a feeling of disappointment. All the problems have come back within the enlarged Community." For this reason, many Britons are already voicing second thoughts about their long-debated decision to "join Europe."

The introduction of the Market's 10% value-added tax on all goods and services has irritated the British consumer who is attempting to cope with an 8.4% inflation rate. Imports from the Continent, such as Italian refrigerators, French cars and German leather goods, have flowed into England faster than British exports have gone to other EEC members. In the meantime, the Market has not yet acted on programs that would directly benefit Britain, such as investing in its industrially underdeveloped regions. It is no wonder that a recent Gallup poll in Britain revealed that 52% of those queried now feel that their nation erred in joining the Market. London now will likely assume a tougher posture toward its Common Market partners.

None of this bodes well for Kissinger's Europe policy. He had hoped that the Sept. 10-11 meeting of the EEC's foreign ministers in Copenhagen would result in a joint platform representing a unified European viewpoint on the future political and military functions of the Atlantic Alliance. The chances of that now seem slim. At best, the foreign ministers may only be able to agree on how and in what forum the members of the EEC will receive President Richard Nixon if he visits Europe this autumn, as expected. If the bickering continues, some Germans gloomily predict, by 1980 Europe will be little more than a glorified PX filled with Common Market goods.

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