on the Farm Bogged Down
From JOHN
THE marathon sitting of the EEC Council during the week before Christmas and again for two days before the New Year, when the Ministers of the Six tried, unsuccessfully, to take the basic decisions on their common agricultural policy, is almost certainly without precedent in the varied annals of international negotiating. At least a dozen leading Ministers from the Six countries met almost non-stop from Monday morning until the early hours of Saturday debat- ing the kind of immediate practical measures that are more normally discussed at a Cabinet meeting than around an international conference table. On Thursday the evening sitting, with only the Ministers and one adviser each present, went on until after midnight, and the next day it was three o'clock in the morning when they finally admitted that they had not made enough pro- gress on agriculture to allow them to decide on the move to the second stage of the Common Market. The session on December 29 and 30 was equally exhausting, and at times dramatic, but still produced no definite outcome.
The fact that no decisions have yet been taken is in itself important for Britain, since until the foundations of the common agricultural policy are laid the Six cannot start negotiating with her about agriculture or about temperate-zone Com- monwealth exports—especially cereals and meat. However, the Ministers are due to meet yet again this week, and work on until the necessary decisions on agriculture have been taken. Ac- cording to the terms of the Treaty the move to the second stage of the Common Market, which is conditional upon agreement on agriculture, had to be decided upon by December 31 or left for another year, but a formula will probably be found enabling the move to be made and back-dated.
More interesting perhaps from the British point of view is that these two sessions provide an object lesson in how the Common Market works, as well as absolute proof, if any were needed, of the progress the Six have made in working together. Firstly, although no decisions were taken it was not for lack of trying, or for lack of goodwill on the part of any one country, but because it proved materially and physically impossible to get through the work to be done, and thrash out the necessary compromises, in the time available. Altogether there were twelve sets of 'regletnenis'—twelve pieces of Common Market legislation, as it were—on the table, most of them on agriculture and dealing with such complex matters as the levies on im- ports of cereals and pigmeat into EEC or the system of 'indicator prices' within the Com- munity. They had been debated and re-debated by the experts, and the problems which remained could only be settled by compromise at minis- terial level. In almost every case a majority of the member countries accepted the EEC Com- mission's proposals, but one or other (not al- ways the same) had basic objections making a compromise necessary. One of the toughest problems was that of deciding exactly how the funds obtained from the levy on low-price im- ports should be shared out between export sub- sidies and the fund for helping with structural improvements in the farm systems of the mem- ber countries. Every compromise that was tried had to be put into detailed form by the experts, and the whole process was just not far advanced by the Friday night before Christmas, nor even by December 30, for a large-scale 'swop' of con- cession for concession to be possible.
Secondly, the meeting showed how fully the need for balanced development of the Common Market, with reasonable equivalence in the sacrifices and concessions made, is accepted by all the member countries. The French had made clear at the beginning of the session before Christmas that despite the agreement reached on the Community's first anti-trust laws, and the reassurances given by the other five on equal pay, France could not agree to the move to the second stage—where voting by qualified majority in the Council replaces unanimity for many de- cisions—unless the foundations of the common agricultural policy had been agreed on. Linked to the move to the second stage, moreover, is the second 'acceleration' of the implementation of the Rome Treaty, the main feature of which would be a 20 per cent. cut in duties between the Six instead of the original 10 per cent. Tariff cuts on industrial goods tend to benefit Germany rather more than France, whereas on the com- mon agricultural policy it is the Germans who have to make the most concessions.
Tackling this sort of major problem together, under considerable psychological pressure— heightened by the political pressure resulting from the negotiations with the UK and the de- sire to strengthen the Community before she joins—has an incalculable effect in strengthening the cohesion of the Six. There is no question here of a supra-national Commission imposing its views, or of a member country being steam- rollered by a majority vote. The essential aim of the Ministers meeting in Brussels was to achieve, with the minimum of concessions of course, a solution which they could all accept and from which no one country would gain (or lose) too much. The sooner Mr. Heath and Mr. Soames (and their Danish counterparts) join MM. Couve de Murville and Pisani, Erhard and Schwarz in these late-night working sessions, the better it will be for English farmers, for Britain in general and for Europe.
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