Obstacles to the liberalization of relations between E.E.C. and Comecon

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The integrated external commercial policy envisaged by the Treaty of Rome is of special significance for the state-trading countries of Eastern Europe. To a far greater extent than the market economies of the West, the East European economies depend upon trade agreements and quotas to establish the volume and composition of their external trade. These are the usual instruments of negotiation among the countries of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon) themselves. Within the European Economic Community, under the terms of the Treaty of Rome, these instruments of negotiation are to be placed in the hands of the Community as a whole after 1969. On commercial grounds, therefore, the argument for appointing permanent missions to Brussels would appear to be stronger for the East than for the West European states. Yet the Comecon countries have hitherto refused to follow suit. Their refusal reflects the Soviet view that the E.E.C. is a monopolistic arrangement of West European capitalists with its political edge clearly directed against the socialist countries. This theme runs through all Soviet pronouncements on the issue. . . . the formation of the Common Market was dictated in the first place by the striving to strengthen capitalism's positions in its struggle against the socialist countries and this, in fact, is the chief class content of so-called West European integration . . . The main idea is that the E.E.C. countries will act in a single front in economic relations with the socialist countries, while the latter are to act each in isolation; that at least is what West Germany is striving for, with the support of the integration champions in other Common Market countries. ''1 Moreover, since the political integration of the Six could only be furthered by their closer economic integration, the U.S.S.R. would obviously wish to