WESTERN EUROPE: Within Our Grasp

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Whenever men get together to build a united Europe, they must first reckon with that great spoiler of dreams, the French National Assembly. Last week the Assembly debated the bold plan for a Common Market (TIME, Jan. 28) that would give six Western European nations a tariff-free trading area nearly as big as the U.S. Premier Guy Mollet, so optimis tic at first, was shaken and depressed. Former Premier Pierre Mendès-France, playing shrewdly on France's century-old fear of German domination, had belabored the proposal in language and innuendo all but identical to that used by the Communist orators. Worse yet. four other former Premiers—Edgar Faure. Joseph Laniel, Antoine Pinay and Paul Reynaud—lent their names to a motion that demanded as the price of French participation that the other five nations must agree to put up capital for France's overseas territo ries, while giving France complete control over the spending of the money.

With men like these fighting him, Mollet's hopes of taking France into the Common Market seemed likely to go glimmering. Desperately, the Premier sounded out the four co-signers of the colonial motion, asking whether they realized how totally unacceptable it was to the rest of the Common Market nations: Did they want to kill the whole idea?

Unwitting Blunder. The answers were electrifying. Faure, who bears Mollet a deep grudge, had drafted the motion and stood by it. But Laniel confessed that he had never seen the text—"They just read me something over the telephone"—and publicly disavowed it. So did Pinay. Bird-like old Paul Reynaud, 78, determined to make amends for his unwitting blunder, bounced up to the speaker's rostrum to express his wholehearted approval of the Common Market. He was, rasped Reynaud, tired of "anthologies" of reasons for staying out of the Common Market. "These reasons," he said, "resolve into a single real one: fear."

Reynaud's ardent support put new heart into the government. Summing up the case for the Common Market, Mollet cried eloquently: "How often between an America sometimes too impulsive, some-times too slow to understand the perils, and a Soviet Union, disquieting and often menacing, have we wished for the existence of a united Europe, a world force not neutral but independent. This dream, this hope is today within our grasp. Have we the right to let it escape?"

Resounding No. The answer was a resounding no. By a vote of 331 to 210 the Assembly gave its approval "in principle" to French participation in the Common Market. The 121-vote margin was far handsomer than Mollet had hoped for, and he had achieved it without accepting any troublesome reservations, or having to pose a vote of confidence. But Mollet's victory did not mean that France is irrevocably committed to join the Common Market. Remembering the European Defense Community, which the French Assembly also approved "in principle" only to reject when it came up for final ratification, France's would-be partners in the Common Market cautiously refrained from premature rejoicing.