Decisive Offer

"Bringing the insular British to the edge of the European continent has not been easy," admitted handsome Sir David Eccles, president of Britain's Board of Trade. But there he was last week in Paris, and beside him stood Chancellor of the Exchequer Peter Thorneycroft, the two most dedicated Europeans in the British Cabinet. "We are an obstinate people, of strong habits," Eccles went on. "After each major war we have retired to our island, licked our wounds and pretended it was a bad dream of no significance. But in Britain we are now ready for the decisive offer." The offer: to participate in a European Free Trade Area of 17 nations, within which there would be no tariffs or import quotas on manufactured goods (TIME, Jan. 28).

This was the most unequivocal pledge of British willingness to cooperate in "building Europe" ever made by a Briton in office. Eagerly, the 17 members of the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (every Western European nation save Spain and Finland) agreed to hammer out concrete plans for the Free Trade Area by next July. As "coordinator," they selected an Englishman--Peter Thorneycroft.

Delighted as they were by Britain's change of heart, toward Europe, many OEEC nations were far from delighted by British insistence that only industrial goods should move freely within the Free Trade Area. (This would allow Britain to continue giving "imperial preference" to the agricultural products which make up nearly 90% of her imports from the Commonwealth.) A Free Trade Area that excluded agriculture, warned Jens Otto Krag of agricultural Denmark, would be "quite unacceptable." Eccles had been quite candid about why the farmer would still be protected: "Agriculture is never far from the minds of the politicians''--a truism equally valid for Europe and the U.S.

Echoing Krag's fears. Belgium's Paul-Henri Spaak flatly warned that the British proposal would not be permitted to delay "even for a single day" establishment of the six-nation* Common Market, which will constitute a tightly knit "little Europe'' within the larger Free Trade Area. The difference between the two is that Britain, for example, agrees to reduce its tariff barriers with the Six at the same rate as the Six reduce them with one another, but Britain would retain control over its own tariffs in trade with other nations. If all goes as planned, the Six should be ready to sign the Common Market Treaty in March.

* France, Italy, West Germany and the Benelux countries.

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