Common Market: Victory of an Idea

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"The construction of Europe has become irreversible," said Jean Monnet, the aging chief architect of the European Economic Community—a remark he might not have felt up to making a few months earlier. French Agriculture Minister Edgard Pisani, looking as if he had swallowed a succulent mouse, was pleased that he could "now leave with a tranquil heart for my winter sports." And the Times of London, gazing upon the events with an outsider's eye, greeted the news from Brussels as "one of the best Christmas presents the Western world could have had."

The Common Market had just survived the worst crisis since its founding six years ago. Just eight days and seven hours before the Jan. 1 deadline insisted on by President de Gaulle, the bleary-eyed ministers of the Market's six nations emerged from their conference room in Brussels with a broad agreement on agricultural policies, the flinty rock on which the Market had threatened to founder.

Proceed on Two Legs. Wearisome hours remain for details to be worked out, and the bothersome issue of deciding common prices for wheat was shelved until after the German elections two years hence. But the Common Market reached agreement on common prices and policies for rice, beef and dairy products, the three most important agricultural categories at stake in the 14-day discussions. The Germans, who had opposed lowering prices right away as too great a shock to their inefficient farmers, won the right to continue to subsidize their dairy farmers a while longer and to buy Danish beef until 1965. In return for Germany's agreement to lower farm prices, the French agreed to lowering the Six's external industrial tariffs at the upcoming "Kennedy round" of talks in Geneva.

In one sense, Charles de Gaulle had once more had his way, but the victory really belonged to all Europe. The agricultural dispute was the last major internal test that the Common Market is apt to face for some time, and its settlement means that the Market can now proceed on two legs—industrial and agricultural—rather than the one on which it has been hopping. In fact, so unrestrained was enthusiasm over the settlement that the bitterness and mistrust caused by De Gaulle's brutal veto of British membership last Jan. 14 seemed finally to be dissipating.

As One Nation. German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard, who counts on the farm vote to help him in the next elections, probably was happy to put on a show of resistance before agreeing to lower farm prices. France, whose aim is to become Europe's breadbasket, feels that it has made only short-term concessions to its partners and no commitments at all to allow such outsiders as the U.S. to be big suppliers of food to the Market. The U.S. may not like the terms that the Market will present in the forthcoming general negotiations, where the President of the U.S. will be authorized to reduce U.S. tariffs by as much as 50% in return for comparable reductions. But at Geneva the Six will now bargain as one nation, with the Common Market commission doing the talking for all. Far more than individual members, the commission has demonstrated its ambition to eliminate all trade barriers.