Not much attention was paid in March 1985, when the European Council, whose members include the chiefs of state and government of the 12 member states, decided that it should constitute a single market by 1992. After all, the European Community had been established in 1957 with the goal of a common market, and many people believed that the goal had been reached; tariffs within the Community had been abolished, a common external tariff put in place and a controversial common agricultural policy instituted.
Stanley Hoffmann is Douglas Dillon Professor of The Civilization of France and Chairman of the Center for European Studies at Harvard University.
Not much attention was paid in March 1985, when the European Council, whose members include the chiefs of state and government of the 12 member states, decided that it should constitute a single market by 1992. After all, the European Community had been established in 1957 with the goal of a common market, and many people believed that the goal had been reached; tariffs within the Community had been abolished, a common external tariff put in place and a controversial common agricultural policy instituted.
Those who knew better realized that Europe remained a maze of border controls, government subsidies to national industries, closed national systems of procurement in military and other key public sectors, and national regulation of industrial standards, copyrights, transportation, banking, insurance and health requirements for the entry of goods. Thus, many were discouraged; after all, the goal of a full economic union had been proclaimed in the early 1970s but never met.
Americans in particular had been enthusiastic about European unity in the 1950s and 1960s-often more so than many Europeans-because they had a vision of a United States of Western Europe, symbolized by the name of Jean Monnet. They grew disheartened when Charles de Gaulle, in the 1960s, was able to destroy that dream and force his partners, in the so-called Luxembourg compromise of 1966, to stick in effect to the rule of unanimity. The Community settled down into one more international organization in which diplomats and bureaucrats haggled over technicalities. American curiosity moved to other parts of the world.
By 1988 it had become evident that this time, something new had indeed happened in Western Europe. Three months after the council's 1985 decision, the European Commission, which is the executive branch of the Community and consists of 17 officials selected by the national governments but independent of them, published a White Paper that listed no less than 300 areas for action, with deadlines for proposals by the commission to deal with them. Ever since, the commission has been turning out directives, and the Council of Ministers, which takes most of the final decisions, has examined and usually adopted them. It was the White Paper that set the deadline of 1992 for the achievement of a truly common market. By the middle of 1989 about half of the obstacles had been removed-or at least ordered to be removed.
This is a premium article
You must be a Foreign Affairs subscriber to continue reading. If you are already a print subscriber, click here to activate your online access.
Log In
Buy PDF
Buy a premium PDF reprint of this article.Related
Not for the first time, agricultural trade has become a live and contentious issue in Atlantic relations. Questions of access and protection have been subjects of constant concern to American farmers and traders since the establishment of Europe's Common Agricultural Policy 25 years ago. Now, though, under the pressures of surplus stocks of grain and falling farm incomes, there is a new area of contention--competitive subsidies designed to win or ensure shares in an erratic world market. Months of negotiation have failed to resolve the issue and neither the European Community nor the United States has shown any sign of being ready to sacrifice what both define as legitimate economic interests.
Trouble is no stranger in Brussels. From the beginning, the European Economic Community has lived from crisis to crisis. One ought not, therefore, to conclude, simply because the Community is now confronted by rapidly mounting agricultural surpluses and a serious disequilibrium between the French franc and the German mark, that this resourceful institution is in serious trouble. And conversely, one should not assume that President de Gaulle's retirement will put things right.
What is happening in the political and economic arena in Jugoslavia today should not be haughtily dismissed as the result of disruptive ideological disagreement among self-righteous Marxist factions. Nor is it a reflection of the evil influence of foreign propaganda, Communist or anti-Communist. Nor has it grown out of mischievous activity of reactionary forces eager to achieve the restoration of the old régime.
