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PAGE 14
PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, MARCH 30, 1984
members of the Community have no realistic alternative than to
try to make it work. Talk of a break away of the other nine, and
the isolation of Britain, is an absurdity.... There is not the
slightest reason to think that the other members of the CommunTty
envisage carrying on without us. By now the �inks are too close
for that. The Community is not for unscrambling....
Its formal arrangements provide for give and take between
national states, each member seeking to maximize its own benefit
as well as contributing to the common advantage. When each takes
as much as it can ge i , it is absurd to charge BritaTrlwith risking
the nobler poITtica ends of the Community every time that this
country (like all the rest) guards its own interest.
Britain, noted correspondent Ian Murray, again in the TIMES ( March 20
issue) is still regarded by the continentals as a "Euro-outsider"--and by
some of them as a serious impediment to European unity:
Mention the British case or Mrs. Thatcher and the conversation
[ in Brussels ] can turn nasty. "If you go on 1ike this you wi11
wreck it [ the EEC] , " said the man with the washed blue eyes. "You
just don't seem to realize that it has brought us peace."
Between the wars, he explained, nobody ever spoke of the Germans.
"For us they were just the sales Boches." But after the last war
he could not remember his countrymen talking of Germans in that
way.
They had become partners with them in a new community,
which had made war unthinkable....
Though Mrs. Thatcher has attended more summits than any of the
other heads of government sitting round the table in Brussels,
she is still seen as something of a new girl. Viscount Etienne
Davignon, the man Britain seems likely to support as next
President of the European Commission, summed up the problem
yesterday. "Mrs. Thatcher does not belong to the generation of
the founders of Europe,
11
hesald-
.- "She hasn�known post-war
Europe.
She does not understand the situation of a country
divided like Germany. She is not part of a European movement
like the Italians."
For all these reasons, as well as the age-old prejudices and
facts of history, Britain remains very much� outsider of the
EEC, despite more than a decade of membership, during which it
has won no thanks for paying a considerable number of bills.
According to a very senior Commission civil servant (French),
there are two crucially important dates in European history. The
first was June 18, 1815, when at Waterloo Britain put an end to
"the first serious attempt to unify Europe."
The second was
January 1, 1973, when Britain joined the EEC and began to put an
end to "the second serious attempt to unify Europe."
That thought led some French journalists last week
that perhaps the summit meeting should be moved a few
the road for a rerun on the Waterloo battlefield.
confident that it has more allies now than it did
ago....
to suggest
miles down
France is
169 years