COLLISION IN BRUSSELS

June 30th, 1965 was to be the date that procedures relating to the financing of the agricultural provisions of the European Common Market were to go into effect, and France, with its low-cost farm produce, was determined that the necessary steps be taken to adhere to schedule. Realizing this, the unitarians among the Market's civil servants were determined to exact from a recalcitrant Gaullist France several major concessions that would give to the Common Market Commission and the European Parliament powers that far exceeded the limited authority that was now budgeted to them. Although the crisis was eventually settled in France's favor and confederation rather than federation remained operative, the occasion was not necessarily a victory for France, but more to the point, a further attrition of the political guy-wires maintaining the Treaty of Rome. To some the book will appear to be much about something, but not that much. To others, it will ring true as an intense and sincere account of the infighting and the broad strategy and counter-strategy followed by France, Germany and the other E.E.C. nations in striving to dispose of the British question, resuscitate the Market's developmental momentum, and further integrate the institution's machinery. Still, quite special.