A Community of Twelve in Search of an Identity

Abstract

EFORE the Community had had time to digest the effects of the first round of enlargement in 1973, when Britain, Ireland and Denmark became full members, it was faced with applications from three Mediterranean countries-Greece, Spain and Portugal. The three new applicants can be described as semi-industrialised countries with a relatively high percentage of their labour force still engaged iti agriculture (from-l 354 to 220 per cenit as compared with 8 7 per cent in the Ninie) and per caput incomes ranging betweenone thir-d and one half of the Community average.' The Community's decision-making system is a continuous process of negotiation frequently based on complicated package deals, and producing a very delicate balance of profits and loisses on each item for every member country or pre)ssure group. The longer a political system or organisation exists, the more will it lead to the establishment of vested interests identified with the status quo.2 Such interests have been created as a result of European integration; Community farmers, who strive through their organisations for higher prices and for the preservation of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), are only onOl of them. 'The entry of new members is bound to upset delicate balances of interests and will, therefore, be seen as a threat except in those cases where a participant sees the enlargement of a group as an opportunity to challenge the status quo. The new applications for membership of the Community have come in a period of proilonged recesslion which manifests itself in high rates of unemployment and inflation-pace Phillips and his curve-low rates of growth, payments deficits and growing demands from ThirdWorld countries for a new international economic order. This is in sharp contrast with the honeymoon period of the 1960s, at least as far as the Six were concerned. With no obvious signs of an early recovery of the West European economy, with economic and political pundits running out of new ideas, the immediate reaction of politicians