Anglo-French Relations a Decade Ago: a New Assessment (2)

Abstract

T HE first phase of the negotiations for British entry to the EEC, which lasted from June 30, 1970 till the spring of 1971, was an agonisingly slow exploration of all the issues. The boring procedures, the colourless setting of the meetings in Brussels and Luxembourg, the extreme caution of the attitude of the Six on all questions, all contributed to a certain sense of frustration in the British delegation. Although Soames at the end of 1970 was reporting from Paris with moderate optimism so far as Anglo-French relations were concemed, the British negotiators in Brussels found it hard to discem much sign of improvement in the French attitude. The same French officials who had so competently carried out the former French policy of keeping Britain out of the EEC were still in place in Brussels and in Paris. The first three or four months of negotiations in 1971 were particularly frustrating since it seemed to the British that on all the major questions-contribution to the budget, New Zealand butter, and Commonwealth sugar-they had put forward proposals which had got nowhere. This was particularly the case for community finance which everybody recognised as the most important of all. The meetings in March were especially barren. However, this period of depression was shortly to be followed by some interesting and encouraging movement in direct Anglo-French contacts.