Common Market: Coup de Murville

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For the first time since France began its boycott of the Common Market last July, the foreign ministers of the Six met to resolve their differences in Luxembourg's Hôtel de Ville. Not much had changed. Offensively, France took the offensive.

Airily remarking that he was "happy to see you all again," Maurice Couve de Murville presented a ten-point proposal for changing the "style" of the Common Market's Executive Commission in Brussels. He really meant the style of its president, Walter Hallstein, who conducts himself, in the opinion of Charles de Gaulle, too much like a head of state. De Gaulle has never quite got over the fact that, as President Kennedy's guest in 1962, Hallstein stayed at Blair House as any chief of state might. And when Hallstein toured India in 1963, le grand Charles hit the ceiling:

"What is he doing in India when I have not visited there?"

On the second day, Couve added a "calendar" of reform: the Six must accept Couve's ten commandments by Jan. 31. The E.E.C. Commission must be fused with the related European Atomic Energy and Goal and Steel Community commissions in a new 14-member body by April 1—and Hallstein was not one of the 14 the French had in mind. Couve told the ministers that they had until Feb. 1 to agree to let France retain its veto over their joint decisions, even though, under the 1957 Treaty of Rome, a qualified majority vote went into effect on Jan. 1.

Shock and sorrow ensued, for everyone had hoped that De Gaulle's recent close squeeze at the polls would have chastened French policy. But Paris was still its old imperious self. The Five denounced the French demands and recessed the talks until Jan. 28, when a showdown seemed inevitable.