Standing Up to De Gaulle

In the four months since France began boycotting the meetings of the European Economic Community, a feeling of gloom has spread over the Continent. Sensing that Charles de Gaulle wants to reshape the Common Market into his own instrument--or, failing that, to destroy it--France's five EEC partners have vacillated between despair and resistance. The result: an almost total lack of meaningful activity in the Market. Last week, in a swift and surprising reversal of form, the five ended their hesitation. At a two-day meeting at the Common Market's Brussels headquarters, they finally stood up to Charles de Gaulle, laid down firm but polite terms aimed at coaxing the French back to the fold.

Offering Bait. First off, the five partners--West Germany, Italy, Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg--agreed substantially on a complicated method of financing agricultural subsidies inside the Common Market, the problem that led to the French walkout. They also dropped some proposals that De Gaulle opposes, such as one to give more power over farm-subsidy money to a Europe-wide Parliament and to the EEC executive commission. As bait for the French, the five offered to hold one ministerial meeting without the commission's Eurocrats, whom De Gaulle dislikes because their supranational leanings conflict with his dream of French hegemony over Europe.

The EEC members balked, however, at going all the way with the French. They brushed aside French proposals to 1) permanently curtail the commission's powers, 2) settle the current dispute between France and the five outside EEC's structure, and 3) alter the treaty creating the Common Market so that France will not automatically lose its power to veto Common Market decisions, as it is scheduled to do in January.

Pinch Hitter. Much of the credit for the common stand against De Gaulle's pressures belonged to a diplomatic pinch hitter, soft-spoken Italian Treasury Minister Emilio Colombo, who presided over the Brussels meeting in place of ailing Amintore Fanfani, Italy's Foreign Minister. After quietly sounding out each delegate, Colombo dramatically produced a proposal while the ministers, fortified with postprandial coffee and cigars, talked late into the night in a secluded forest home outside the Belgian capital. Thanks to their agreement, said EEC Commission President Walter Hallstein, "the Community is alive." The sole French reaction in public: Foreign Minister Couve de Murville's cool and correct acknowledgement that the invitation to rejoin the EEC meetings had been received.

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