Aggravation in Athens

SUMMITS

Ten nations in search of the ties that once bound

After four years of summit meetings held under the lengthening shadow of potential failure, the ten leaders of the European Community blundered last week into a diplomatic debacle they long had feared. At the end of three days of alternately listless and acrimonious negotiations in Athens, they found themselves unable to announce agreement on a single item of their long agenda. The key obstacle: the threat of bankruptcy for the Community unless there is an increase in member contributions to its common budget ($22.5 billion in 1983) or a scaleback in an expensive ($14.3 billion this year) agricultural subsidy policy. Said French President Francois Mitterrand: "Europe knows, in all clarity, that it is in crisis."

The French, as usual, blamed Britain for the deadlock, in particular Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's insistent demands for "my money," or what she considers an acceptable rebate on her country's outsize contribution ($1.7 billion more than Britain received this year vs. an even balance for France) to the Community budget. The British, in turn, zeroed in on what they saw as Mitterrand's intransigence in refusing to address the long-term financial problem caused by heavy subsidies to the Community's 8 million farmers. West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl avoided the search for scapegoats but observed, "We must grasp that a Europe divided and exhausted by renewed nationalism will exert no influence in the world and can become a plaything for foreign interests."

For Western Europe it was indeed the worst possible time for a demonstration of impotence. As the chill in U.S.-Soviet relations has deepened, West European confidence in the Reagan Administration's leadership has drained and there are increasing calls for a greater role by Community members in easing East-West tensions. Moreover, without concerted industrial cooperation, the ailing economies of the Ten will find it difficult to deal with the technological challenge from Japan and the U.S. Nor can Western Europe bargain confidently with the U.S. over festering trade problems in steel and farm products.

Money is the problem. If the Community does not raise revenues, drawn mainly from retail sales taxes among member nations, or slash spending, its budget next year will not cover farm subsidies, much less long-sought social and industrial programs. But even the prospect of bankruptcy failed to move the leaders, largely because the budget crisis is linked to three intractable issues: the exorbitant costs of the agricultural program, which eats up two-thirds of available resources; Thatcher's demand for a more equitable system of member contributions; and long-promised membership for heavily agricultural Spain and Portugal, which inevitably would raise farm-subsidy outlays even more.

From the beginning, Thatcher had made it clear that she would use the bankruptcy threat as a bargaining weapon Mitterrand was offended by that tactic as well as by Thatcher's "statistical" approach to problems that he regards as essentially political. Said a French spokesman on the summit's first day: "We were impressed by the rigidity of the British representatives, while the other nine showed a sense of open-mindedness." Replied a British spokesman: "I'm sure that is what Napoleon thought before the Battle of Waterloo." Delving deeper into the history of hostility between the two nations, the French spokesman then countered, "Remember, France won the Hundred Years' War."

That early rhetorical skirmish set the tone for a meeting in which, according to one Irish official, "no real negotiations ever got started." A distracted Kohl did not intervene between his quarreling partners; at one point in the session, to the annoyance of other summiteers, he slipped away to a Greek TV center for a three-way conversation with President Reagan and the West German astronaut aboard Skylab. After the slender hope of a last-minute compromise vanished during the closing summit dinner, Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi told the press, "If I may use metaphorical language, we failed to elect a new Pope, and there is black smoke." With the health of the Community hanging in the balance, the question now is: Who, in the next round of negotiations, will blink first--if anyone blinks at all? This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.