Enlarging the European Union

The Commission Seeking Influence, 1961-1973

M. Geary

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781137315571
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The book presents a new history of the first enlargement of the EU. It charts the attempts by the European Commission to influence the outcome of the British and Irish bids to join the Common Market during the 1960s and 1970s. The most politically divisive EU enlargement is examined through extensive research in British, Irish, EU, and US archives.

1

The Commission and Britain’s First Application

The British application for Community membership in 1961 led to the EEC’s first major crisis. Chapter 1 explores the role played by the European Commission after Britain submitted its application in mid-1961 through to the collapse of enlargement negotiations 18 months later. Unlike most accounts of Britain’s first and unsuccessful attempt at membership, the main focus of the chapter is on how the Commission responded to the British request and its influence over the subsequent negotiations. It addresses issues central to the Commission and fundamental to the enlargement question that arose because of the British application. These include: (i) the working relationship between the EEC’s institutions and in particular between the Commission and the Council; (ii) the type of Community envisaged by the Hallstein Commission; (iii) the conflicts within the Community over Britain’s membership; (iv) the views of the Council on the Commission’s role within the enlargement negotiations; and (v) the influence of the Commission on the negotiations and their outcomes. A central question that the chapter seeks to answer is how the Commission used the enlargement question to extend its influence in the policy and decision-making process.¹ While a number of issues dominated negotiations between the British and the Community, such as agriculture, the chapter, of necessity, analyses just one, namely, the problem of accommodating Britain’s Commonwealth interests. The Commission played a prominent role in each issue negotiated, but an analysis of the Commonwealth problem reveals how that institution tried to, at the same time, create a role for itself and grab a certain amount of influence inside and outside the negotiations.

Calm before the storm

By early 1960, there was on-off speculation within diplomatic channels that Britain would make a move towards the six.² This coincided with an increased number of exploratory meetings between London and the Commission. At one level, these were required; the fall-out from the Free Trade Area (FTA) talks had left soured relations between both sides. Moreover, British officials had to change the negative perceptions of Britain’s European policy that had found their way into the minds of influential Europeans. From an examination of the minutes of meetings between the Commission and British officials in the 12 months before the membership application was made, there was an inescapable sense of scepticism exhibited by the Commission.

One of the central actors in Whitehall who understood the importance of addressing these negative perceptions was Edward Heath, Lord Privy Seal (later responsible for the British negotiations). In the aftermath of a conversation with Hallstein in November 1960, Heath reported to the Foreign Office that: ‘I think that if we could convince him that British participation in the work of the Community would be an addition to his importance, and not the reverse, he might take a more positive view of it’.³ It was no secret that Hallstein craved a higher profile for the office of Commission President and for the institution. But it reflected the importance Heath attached to winning over the Commission as an ally in London’s relations with the Community. Hallstein was only one of nine Commission members whose views London attempted to sway in the months before Britain applied to join the Community. Heath also concluded that Rey held a negative opinion on the value of Britain’s role in an enlarged Community. Indeed, he wrote: ‘I was disappointed by M. Rey, who seemed discursive and rigid in his views, and whom Professor Hallstein had little hesitation in interrupting’.⁴ Doubts about British membership of the Community were repeated at official level. Jean-François Deniau, a senior French official in the Commission, expressed significant concerns about Britain’s membership and ‘saw no chance of the U.K. becoming a member of the EEC through accession to the Community under Article 237 of the Treaty of Rome’.⁵ This was largely because of Britain’s interests in the fields of agriculture, the Commonwealth, and for domestic reasons. Referring to the CAP, Deniau concluded that something could be worked out between the six and Britain ‘in four years or so’.⁶ He also highlighted the lack of enthusiasm at the idea of Britain joining the Community. For the Commission, it was a matter of timing, and the first stage of the tariff reductions had just ended. Moreover, Mansholt was still working on the CAP, a policy many in the Commission (and in London) believed was incompatible with the British agricultural system.⁷ The Commission’s resources were stretched, and a possible request by Britain and other countries for membership or association would stretch these resources further.

In the months immediately before Britain submitted its application, the Commission remained sceptical. In April 1961, Hallstein told British officials that he believed that the Commonwealth difficulties would prove negotiable and that arrangements for the other EFTA countries could be reached once the major differences with Britain were resolved.⁸ But he warned the British that they could not be members of two systems. Nothing less than an expressed willingness on the part of the British government to accede to the Treaty of Rome would get negotiations started. This implied acceptance of the Community’s agricultural policy even though Mansholt’s proposals were still under discussion in the Council. Nevertheless, Hallstein expected an unequivocal acceptance by the British of all parts of the fledgling but expanding corpus of Community legislation. During his discussions with the British, Hallstein held back from declaring his outright opposition. He was not against enlargement per se and saw no ‘insurmountable problem’ with Britain’s entry.⁹ Instead, the question was whether the British were ready to negotiate seriously on joining. By April, Hallstein saw ‘no indication that they were’.¹⁰ A month later, he expressed anxieties over the changes in voting power in the Council if Britain became a member. Hallstein foresaw the emergence of voting blocs in the Council, because London would be entering the Community with other countries, such as Ireland and Denmark, whose votes it could rely on, as well as the possible support of the Dutch. Another concern was that the traditions of the British civil servants working in the Commission would lead to its ‘evolution into a compromise-making machine by making it more an administrative or consultative mechanism’.¹¹ Third, he was critical of Britain’s role in the Council of Europe, where its parliamentarians always sided with their government. In this context, Hallstein was in favour of allowing the British into the Community only after majority rule was introduced in the Council, in order to prevent new members from vetoing any of the ‘major trends now in process’.¹² Marjolin had expressed similar views in private, and it was one of the many issues under examination by the Commission’s secretariat.¹³ In a final analysis of Britain’s attitude to the European project, Hallstein argued that the British had not accepted European unity as an ideal: ‘they have accepted it as a fact’.¹⁴ Britain had missed 11 years of European integration. He was, therefore, inclined, during the negotiations, to add conditions rather than take them away, so as to ‘take account of the British state of mind which had not kept up with the European evolution of this problem. To do otherwise, would amount to regression’.¹⁵ Hallstein’s pointed attacks on Britain’s attitude to the EEC could be traced back to the early 1950s, and these views changed little over the following decade. On the eve of Britain’s historic leap across the English Channel, the Commission President and many of his colleagues remained unconvinced that the time was right or that London fully appreciated the implications of membership.¹⁶

By early 1961, six months before Britain submitted its application for membership, the Commission was busy assessing its possible implications. In February, internal reports focused on such issues as the Commonwealth and Community trade. Documents suggested that, in dealing with the Commonwealth countries and their economic relationship with Britain, tariff negotiations would have to be based on a product-by-product basis.¹⁷ This analysis was remarkably similar to what would happen during the negotiations when, due to the complexity of the British position vis-à-vis the Commonwealth, the Community dealt individually with each commodity. It was an indication of how the Commission was able to use its technical expertise to make itself relevant to the enlargement process. It concluded that, whether Britain opted for membership or association, the Community faced three important issues in any form of negotiation: (i) relations with the Commonwealth; (ii) problems concerning agriculture; and (iii) Britain’s relations with the EFTA. These three issues would loom large in the subsequent enlargement negotiations. However, the Commission’s analysis dealt in far greater detail with the problems that would arise if Britain pursued associate rather than full membership.

Commissioners used public speeches to clarify aspects of the acquis that were central to the enlargement negotiations. Speaking in London four months prior to the application, Mansholt stressed that the EEC’s external tariff system should be seen as a negotiating tariff, a point of departure for tariff reductions and a lever for achieving greater liberalism in world trade policies. It was not designed to prevent other countries, such as Britain, from concluding ‘treaties of accession or association’.¹⁸ He was absolute in his opinion that no attempt at bridge-building between the six and the seven would succeed; the prevailing views on both sides were ‘too divergent to be brought easily under one common denominator’.¹⁹ It was ‘rather like trying to square a circle, or rather, trying to draw a square which would be a circle at the same time’.²⁰ His comments reinforced the Commission’s belief that there would be significant difficulty in merging the economic policies of the seven with those of the six. Mansholt, perhaps more than the other Commissioners, was acutely aware of the sharp difference between his agriculture policy and the British agricultural tradition. Despite this, of course, he made no attempt to shape a policy that met the needs of the British farmer. The Dutch Commissioner certainly attached greater priority to the advance of the CAP than to making Britain’s task of joining the Community any easier. Yet, this was not the same as opposing British membership. It reflected a belief that the six had devised a winning method and that it was up to would-be applicants to adapt to this system rather than for the Community to adapt to the applicants. He was, in other words, anticipating the stance which the Commission has adopted regarding every single membership application since 1970 (if not earlier).

Mansholt outlined five basic conditions that would have to be met before the Commission would agree to support Britain’s application: (i) enlargement could not lead to a weakening of the Common Market; (ii) it should not impair relations between Britain and the Commonwealth; (iii) it had to be compatible with GATT; (iv) it had to take into account the interests of non-member countries, and especially the United States; and (v) it had to have regard for the interests of the other members of the EFTA. These conditions later became the central preoccupation of the Commission during the enlargement negotiations, and, as Mansholt admitted, ‘they are clearly not easily reconcilable’.²¹ Comments by the Dutch Commissioner and other colleagues revealed a very potent communautaire spirit and a significant merger of opinion within the Brussels executive. They believed that the Community model that they were engaged in building was worth preserving and therefore ruled out any major, Treaty-altering concessions to prospective members. Indeed, as Mansholt stated: ‘The Community can hardly deny its own character […] It can hardly be expected to make major concessions. And a solution which begins by making conditions which would require the Community to repudiate its own nature is not a solution at all’.²²

When Harold Macmillan made the official announcement on 31 July 1961 that Britain would seek EEC membership, there was little surprise within the Commission.²³ London had toyed with the idea of informing the Commission prior to the announcement, but the British officials had ‘no confidence in the Commission’s ability to maintain secrecy’.²⁴ The Commission issued a short communiqué welcoming the application and expressed its ‘grand intérêt et une satisfaction de la declaration’.²⁵

The application raised serious logistical and political challenges for the Commission. During its early assessment of the problems likely to arise if Britain applied to join the Community, no formal discussion took place of the role the Commission would play at the enlargement talks, though informally the issue was likely to have preoccupied Hallstein and others. Suddenly, after Macmillan’s announcement, technical and procedural problems rose to the top of the Community’s agenda. Chief among these was the type of negotiating procedure to adopt as well as where the talks would be held, and, perhaps crucially, who would lead the Community at these negotiations. On these issues, the Commission guarded its position to avoid antagonising the six, who had yet to formally discuss the negotiating procedure. Responding to a question from the European Parliament, the Commission stressed that it would not make a public statement on its interpretation of Articles 237 and 238 of the Treaty of Rome and the conditions for membership.²⁶ This was a clear indication that the Commission would not issue a formal avis on the application or get involved in a public debate with the six on the interpretation of these articles. There were two issues at play here: on the one hand, the Commission’s (understandable) caginess about declaring its hand on the procedural matters being fiercely debated among the six, and on the other the Commission’s political decision not to issue a full avis as demanded by the Treaty. The former was primarily linked to the delicate and controversial nature of the procedural discussions among the six; the latter had more to do with the conditional nature of Britain’s approach to the EEC. However, in a veiled reference to the negotiating procedure, the Commission highlighted the role it had played in the Dillon Round of GATT negotiations in Geneva and the association agreement signed between the Community and Greece as evidence of the importance of the Commission in negotiating for the EEC. The Hallstein Commission expected more than just a supporting role at the enlargement talks, even if the Treaty was largely silent on the procedures to follow. As van der Harst makes clear, a practical approach was required.²⁷

The lack of clarity on how to proceed led to a heated debate in the Community between the six and the Commission. The Community was not new to negotiations with external actors or Community enlargement. Piers Ludlow points to the talks that created the EEC and draws parallels to the 1961–1963 negotiations, in which ‘similarly complex technical difficulties were anticipated’.²⁸ Deciding on the appropriate model for the negotiations was of vital importance to the Commission, not least because it wanted to protect its interests, attempt to influence the outcome of the talks, and avoid any unnecessary concessions to the applicants that might create unwelcome precedents for future enlargement negotiations. At the same time, the member states had competing interes...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. The Commission and Britain’s First Application
• 2. The Commission and the Irish Application
• 3. From Veto to Veto: Britain and the Commission
• 4. Ireland and the Policy of Failure
• 5. Navigating the Gaullist Veto
• 6. La Bataille des Chiffres
• 7. Challenging the Acquis
• Conclusions
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index