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PAST OR'S REPORT, Page 18, 1979
strike and mounting petrol shortages.
their displeasure.
Page 18
They used this election to register
In Britain, only a third of eligible voters went to the polls--the lowest
turnout of all nine countries. Anti-market politicians claimed that the
mass abstention was proof of British dissatisfaction with controversial
EEC policies such as the one with agriculture. Worse yet, many of the
Labor party delegates dispatched to Strasbourg are anti-marketeers them
selves and will constitute a neat little bloc of foot-draggers in the
Parliament.
The most ridiculous situation occurred in Denmark. The Danes reacted to
the first European election by giving the largest bloc of seats to a party
dedicated to opposing the European ideal.
The so-called ''Peoples Anti
EEC Party" took four of Denmark's allotted 16 seats, the remainder being
split between seven other parties. Greenland, whose 24,000 electorate
formed a separate constituency to the rest of Denmark, also elected an
anti-market candidate.
Even in Italy the high turnout was dismissed by most analysts as misleading.
Party discipline in Italy is very strict, virtually guaranteeing heavy
participa�ion in any election.
Today's {June l!/ edition of the Daily Telegraph contained an article
stating that the European elections were bound to radically alter the
future of the Common Market.
That is hard to see. The same article ad
mitted that the newly constituted parliament would have only fractionally
more power than the old one. Political control will still largely rest
with the EEC's Council of Ministers, who represent and directly report
to their respective national governments.
Papal Confrontation With Communism
It is by no means coincidental that at the very time free Europe's secular
leaders have made their latest (yet ultimately futile) attempt to achieve
political unity, the head of the Roman Catholic Church should be led to
reveal his vision of the Europe of the future. Pope John Paul II, concluding
his precedent-shattering nine-day journey behind the Iron Curtain, has
served notice in no uncertain terms that he will be a source of enormous
influence in European political affairs from now on.
�ost of the news stories reporting on the Pope's trip to Poland have failed
to give the enormous European and global impact in what he did and what he
said. A very notable exception appeared in this morning's /June 11/ edition
of the International Herald Tribune. It was written by John Vinocur, a
New York Times reporter who traveled to Poland with the papal entourage
and almost singularly grasped the awesome portent of the trip.
' Referring to himself again and again as 'this Slav, this Pole,'", wrote
Vinocur, "the 59-year-old former ar�hbishop of Cracow seemed intent on
underscoring his own uniqueness and making understood that he� has de
fined his mission, eight months after his election as pope, as one in
which rapprochement between the power blocs and the furthering of human
rights in Eastern Europe carry weight.