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No increase in power for the European Parliament. This issue is likely to be deferred.
A formal change in the Rome Treaty to prevent majority voting on the council, thus retaining control of veto power. France will probably have to settle instead for an informal gentleman's agreement that no country will be overruled on a matter of vital national interest.
Such a compromise, still far from certain, is about as far as France's Common Market partners can go. For supranational machinery is not an idealistic luxury but a necessity for the continuing growth of the Market. Already, for example, there is a clamor to harmonize business taxes among the Six—the old national systems have become an impediment to intramural trade. Some central authority must increasingly arbitrate and enforce common rules and laws beyond the sovereign confines of the member states.
Even De Gaulle's detractors doubt that he will ultimately try to destroy the Market; as Jean Monnet pointed out long ago, whatever else he may do, De Gaulle hesitates to act in a way that will make him look foolish in history's long view. Last week De Gaulle hinted that he might be ready to reverse the veto by which he kept the British out of the Common Market nearly three years ago. Whatever De Gaulle is really up to, he is finding in the current French election campaign that his policy on European unity—or rather, disunity—is the one issue on which he is opposed by all
French opinion, from farmers in Brittany to industrialists in Lille.
Beyond any Common Market compromise, a basic conflict will remain. On one side are the federalists—or "Federasts," as the more Utopian advocates of the cause are sometimes called—who feel that no single European nation can ever again play the Great Power, that the only true power on the continent must be a united Europe. On the other side is De Gaulle, who argues in ringing 19th century tones that each country must enjoy unrestricted nationalism in order to be, and to feel, strong. Admittedly, he has made France feel stronger than it has in decades. Only through a loose aggregation of such sovereign nations, he says, can the true Europe come about. Moreover, only by pulling away from the Atlantic Community can Western Europe hope to woo Eastern Europe—a debatable proposition, because it is just possible that the Eastern countries might trust an association including the U.S. more than one in which they would be alone with Germany and France.
The U.S. can do little directly to influence the outcome of this debate. Indirectly, however, the issue is related to the NATO problem, in which the U.S. is deeply involved.
The military Communist threat to Europe has so markedly declined in recent years that NATO's importance is increasingly a matter of politics and status. De Gaulle is correct enough when he asserts that NATO is essentially an American command. The NATO "sword" remains the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The NATO shield is the 27 divisions, six of them American, twelve West German, that are assigned for integrated use in the event of a Soviet land attack on Western Europe. Many of NATO's divisions, including German ones, are equipped with tactical nuclear weapons—but in all cases the warheads remain under U.S. control.
NATO without France