WESTERN EUROPE: Bridge in Mid-Air

WESTERN EUROPE Bridge in Mid-Air For a decade, the nations of Europe had worked together in unprecedented harmony to free the Continent of its commerce-throttling trade barriers. Now there are two big blocs, at sixes and sevens. The Six got there first with a tightly knit Common Market, comprising France, West Germany, Italy and Benelux. Last week the Finance Ministers of the Outer Seven sat down in Stockholm to initial their new European Free Trade Association agreement, which is designed to lower tariffs within the group at about the same pace as the Common Market sets for itself.

The Outer Seven—Britain, Scandinavia, Switzerland, Austria and Portugal—had little in common, and not much enthusiasm for their task. Theirs is a looser arrangement, with none of the supranational and political overtones of the Common Market, and the nations do not make up a natural economic grouping. In fact, the Seven as a whole do more trade with the Common Market Six than with one another; nonmember West Germany, for example, sells far more to Sweden than does fellow member Britain. The real purpose of the Free Trade Area, as opening-day oratory made plain, was to "build a bridge" toward the Common Market itself, in the hope of avoiding a permanent economic division in Europe. Plainly, if the bridge does not in time hook up with the Common Market, it will just hang in midair.

As a gesture of future solidarity, the ministers in Stockholm voted to ask France for permission to set up Outer Seven's headquarters in Paris itself.