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Mollet was prepared to stake the life of his government on the vote he demanded. Would the French Assembly now try to undo every compromise French negotiators had made? Warned Foreign Minister Christian Pineau: "It is not necessary to travel abroad much to discover that in the last five years France has acquired a reputation for being unable to make up its mind. If we say no to the— Common Market, we will convince the entire world of our inability to say yes."
In & Out. The likelihood of a yes from all six nations, including France, has suddenly bestirred the British, who have long kept one tentative foot in and one determined foot out of the Continent. To avoid Britain's being frozen out completely, Harold Macmillan, when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer last fall, put forth a counterscheme, broader but less radical than the Common Market. He proposed the creation of a Free Trade Area in Europe, to take in not just the Common Market Six, but twelve other European nations besides. The Six, who have all had previous bitter experience with British delaying tactics, said fine—but we want to create the Common Market first. The Free Trade Area would:
¶Create a market of 260 million people, a bigger trading area than either the U.S. or Russia.
¶Allow specified goods—mostly manufactured items—to move between member nations free of tariff.
¶Have no common tariff against outsiders, thus allowing Britain, nearly half of whose trade is with other Commonwealth nations, to continue giving "imperial preference" to the agricultural products which make up nearly 90% of Commonwealth exports to Britain.
¶Probably include, in addition to Britain and the six Common Market countries, Austria, the Scandinavian countries, Greece, Iceland, Portugal and Switzerland —roughly the nations which, since the Marshall Plan days of 1948, have been fellow members of the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC).
Under this idea, there might be a free market all over Europe for Volkswagens, Jaguars and Fiats, while all nations outside the nucleus of the Six kept trade barriers on many other products. Thus both schemes could dovetail.
The Architects. Two dedicated men deserve most of the credit for the Common Market scheme. The idea was born to France's Europe-minded planner, Jean Monnet, who keeps a model of the Kon-Tiki on his desk as a symbol of those who take brave risks to prove an idea in the face of skepticism and indifference. The other man is NATO's newly chosen Secretary-General, Paul-Henri Spaak of Belgium, who has presided over the interminable treaty negotiations in Brussels. One reason why the near completion of the Common Market has burst on Europe as a surprise is that Spaak has learned from the past mistakes of would-be unifiers of Europe not to ask too much too fast, or to proclaim too soon exaggerated ambitions.