Never crisis. West become a plaything of foreign interests'.
Thatcher As they come across in the newspapers, the rows at the Athens summit seem obscure. They hinge on budget rebates, the Common Agricultural Policy, butter mountains, milk lakes, and the entry of Spain and Portugal into the Common Market. These are not the types of issues socialists often deal with. They trivial questions to provoke such a big crisis.
But once the basis of the EEC is understood, all the different questions fall place their significance is obvious.
The core of the EEC is its economic mechanisms, which alC designed wage a competitive struggle with the United States While the rhetoric of the West European powers is almost always directed against the Soviet Union A song and dance at the Athens summit German Chancellor Helmut Kohl warned that 'a Europe divided and exhausted by renewed nationalism will exert no influence in the world and can has presented herself as a all their practical economic aimed against the USA At the Athens summit. one of the chief proposals discussed was by put rag a rone 19 putting a tax on the $5 billion a year EEC soya bean imports from the United States. Simultaneously France has been stepping up its natural gas imports from the USSR Germany meantime West has been granting trade credits to Hast Ger. mally.
Reasons
The reasons for the versus United States conflict simple. The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe do not represent an economic threat to the Soviet and East European goods quality that they hope to of Culicle WILl West Germany, France, Italy few marginal cases of "dumpof Italian-designed, easily dealt with by the Economically Hasterr Europe only really affects valuable une source of raw materials small additional market. Last year's huge row between the United States and the Common Market over the Siberia to Western Europe gas pipeline for example was about the determination to maintain its access to hast Europear fuel and raw material supplies. This policy towards Eastern Europe is bitterly opposed by the United States which would like to sell the oil and materials to Western Europe itself.
Soviet The Soviet Union only viewed by the EEC states as a military threat. I his is dealt with by the through Durela up British, French and West German nuclear and con. ventional armed forces. Mitterand's government ir for has stepped up its imports of oil and gas from Eastern Europe. But it still on about the USSR military threat. The United States, on the other hand, is a direct day-byday economic threat Western Europe.
Second LEe World War United States dominated what is now the EEC countries by is ds. By 1950 the US tias export industrial exporting more than four times as manufactured goods as West Germany. In manufacturing Laut Western Europe was able to hit back during the 1950s and 1960s. The US share of world exports manufactured goods was halved between 1950 Meanwhile the West Germany tripled. By the and of the 1970s, Wes Germany Was exporting more manufactured goods than the United States. By 1980 the productivity West German manufacturing was only 25 per cent lower than that of the United States, whereas in 1970 it had been almost 50 per cent lower.
The success of Western Europe in many sectors of manuracturing industry has meant that there have been tew clashes between the EEC states over industrial policy.
La ne only exceptions in few declining industries such as steel. The real crises nave come in those areas high technology industries, finance, fuel, raw and agriculture — in which the EEC can 10t with the United States.
This is why the Athens summit exploded around apparently obscure questions such as butter mountains and budget rebates
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Common Agricultural Policy. France and the other EEC powers.
THE ATHENS SUMMIT has brought the Common Market to the edge of its greatest
British de Gaulle fighting for a huge budget rebate and against the wastefulness of the JOHN ROSS looks at the issues behind the squabbling of Britain, West Germany,