Western Europe: Gains & Pains of EFTA

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The European Free Trade Association has an ill-concealed death wish. Most of EFTA's seven members view their association as a temporary expedient that they would like to do away with—if they could only get into the stronger six-nation Common Market. Last week both organizations held ministerial meetings, the "Inner Six" in Brussels and the "Outer Seven" near Lisbon. Both groups are gloomy these days, the Six because French obstructionism has taken the fire out of the venture, and the Seven because they seem no closer to joining the Six. But it was the Seven who appeared the most determined to make the best of an undesirable situation.

The EFTA Seven—Britain, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Switzerland and Portugal—have some solid achievements behind them. Since 1959, they have pared tariffs on one another's industrial products by 80% and increased trade among themselves from $3.1 billion to $7.1 billion. On Jan. 1, almost all tariffs will go down to zero, making EFTA a free industrial trade zone 18 months sooner than the Six. As if to reassure the world that their association can last, the Seven are building a six-story headquarters in Geneva.

Still, the question preoccupying the EFTA delegates was how to crack the Common Market, which has about twice as much population, production and trade as the EFTA nations. Exports to the Common Market are all-important, particularly for Austria, which trades much more with the Six than with its fellow members. But as the Common Market's internal tariffs have been reduced, the earlier fast rate of increase in EFTA's sales to the Six has slackened. Denmark's beef exports to the Common Market have dwindled from $100 million to almost nothing.

Feeling a sense of frustration and disunity, some of the EFTA Seven have individually approached the Six for membership. Austria has been negotiating since last year without making progress. Recently the Danes made a proposal, more propagandistic than practical, that Denmark, Norway and Sweden join the Six simultaneously. At last week's meeting, Portuguese Economics Minister José Gonfalo Correia de Oliveira criticized the "impatience" of some members and warned that "an attempt to break into locked doors at all costs will give the Common Market the power to decide unilaterally the timing and conditions of European integration." The others seemed to agree, and the meeting wound up with a decision that the Seven would deal as a bloc with the Six, whenever that becomes politically possible—essentially when France ends its opposition to the admission of EFTA's biggest member, Britain.