Europe: Ironical Anniversary

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It was the most elegant birthday party Rome had seen in years. There were black Lancias and motorcycle escorts for the guests. They were attended by pages in medieval red and gold coats and silver-buckled shoes, and listened to festive speeches amid the baroque frescoes in the Palazzo dei Conservatori. They dined in the Palazzo del Quirinale, the former home of Italy's kings, and sipped champagne until late into the night with some of Rome's most beautiful women, including Gina Lollobrigida. The only trouble was that the men who should have been there to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome, which established the Common Market, were absent. France's Jean Monnet, generally acknowledged as the father of the Common Market, did not receive an invitation, and Belgium's Paul-Henri Spaak, who helped draft the treaty, was asked so late that he declined to attend. Instead, the fellow who had all the fun was the one who deserved it least. He was Charles de Gaulle, whose narrow view of Europe has probably done most to harm the Common Market and slow its growth.

As the only head of state among the guests, De Gaulle rated the most elaborate welcome at the airport, including a 21-gun salute, a bigger limousine, a larger motorcycle escort. Television cameras zeroed in on him, and Roman crowds shouted, "Viva De Gaulle!" As the guests and their Italian hosts walked from a ceremony in the Palazzo dei Conservatori through Michelangelo's Piazza del Campidoglio, the other European leaders and Eurocrats trailed behind le grand Charles like captive barbarians in one of Caesar's triumphal parades.

Dutch Demands. At the conference table, De Gaulle also loomed far larger than his fellow conferees. The No. 1 topic was Britain's application for admission to the Common Market. In a ten-minute speech, the French President said, in effect: We are going to have to talk together an awful lot before we decide anything. He called for closer political ties among the Six and proposed another summit meeting some time this year to discuss the problems posed by Britain's desire to join.

Though De Gaulle got all the attention, he did not completely get his own way. In a remarkably frank speech, Italian President Giuseppe Saragat tweaked De Gaulle by calling for British admission and by thanking the U.S. for its role in rebuilding war-shattered Western Europe. And the Dutch, fearing that De Gaulle intends to use closer ties among the Six to make it harder for anyone else to get in, flatly refused to go along with De Gaulle's summit proposal unless the British question was taken up at once by the Common Market. After much shaking of his presidential head, De Gaulle gave in.