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22Wolfram Kaiserreally prepared to take care of the economic interests of those EFTA states whichdid not apply for full EEC membership. Under pressure from the Swedes and theSwiss, the British eventually agreed pro forma at the EFTA Council on 27-8 June1961, not to join the EEC “until satisfactory arrangements had been worked out (...)to meet the various legitimate interests of all members of EFTA, and thus enablethem all to participate from the same date in an integrated European market”. 65 TheBritish did so, however, only to retain some measure of EFTA solidarity, should theentry negotiations fail and Britain have to continue to live with its EFTA partners.The London Agreement was no “oath of the musketeers”, as one Danish official,Erling Kristiansen, recalled it later. 66 As early as January 1962 the British ForeignOffice began to consider how to dump the neutral EFTA states, should Britain'sentry negotiations succeed, but association of the neutrals prove impossible. 67The fourth weakness of EFTA was the United States' hostility to it and to awider settlement between the EEC and EFTA, which intensified with persistentAmerican balance-of-payments problems during 1958-61. In late 1959 the Americans,contradicting Britain's and EFTA's rhetoric on Sixes and Sevens, assured theEEC governments that “provided the EEC follows constructive policies, the USsees no reason why the absence of a broad free-trade area must result in a Europeanpolitical split”. 68 The Eisenhower government subsequently not only supported theSix during the diplomatic acceleration conflict, but also over the reorganisation ofthe OEEC, which was transformed into the Organisation for Economic Cooperationand Development (OECD) to include the United States, Canada, Japan, Australiaand New Zealand as full members and was entrusted with new responsibilities,such as the coordination of aid to developing countries. The United States'hostility towards EFTA sharply accelerated the reassessment of EFTA's diplomaticusefulness within Whitehall. In May 1960 the Foreign Office commented on aninterministerial report on British European policy:”Already the value of E.F.T.A. is being heavily discounted in the United Kingdomand in Europe and in America, where it is increasingly assumed that we shall sooneror later have to surrender. This belief will grow, rather than diminish, as time goeson.” 69Once the British government had indicated that it was prepared to apply for fullEEC membership in spring 1961, the new Kennedy government also stronglyopposed the economic association of the EFTA neutrals with the EEC – with the65. Heath referred to this agreement in his opening statement in Brussels on 10 October 1961: PROPREM 11/3561.66. Statement by Erling Kristiansen at the conference “The Creation of EFTA”, Oslo, 14-17 May 1992,quoted and believed in R. GRIFFITHS and S. WARD, United House or Abandoned Ship? EFTAand the EEC Membership Crisis, 1961-63, DOC. IUE 29/94 (COL.11), Florence 1994, p.16.67. Jackling to Coulson (Stockholm): PRO FO 371/164698/16 (22 January 1962) and Note Barclay ontalks Heath-Spaak: PRO FO 371/164704/132 (19 March 1962).68. Ellis-Rees (Paris) to Foreign Office: PRO FO 371/150150/48 (6 January 1960). See also Grewe(Washington) to Auswärtiges Amt: PA AA 354/Ref. 200-I A2 (13 November).69. PRO FO 371/150279/278 (11 May 1960).
Challenge to the Community 23partial exception of Austria, whose neutrality it considered imposed by the Allies.In a memorandum for the British the American Under-Secretary of State for EconomicAffairs, George Ball, made it abundantly clear in May 1961 that“the U.S. Government would not be prepared to see substantial derogations from theprinciple of the Rome treaty in order to accomodate third countries which can negotiatetheir commercial problems in the G.A.T.T. and the Trade Committee of theTwenty-one just as the U.S. Government is prepared to do.” 70American European policy strengthened the determination of the British governmentto join the EEC early, if possible, and without awaiting solutions for theEFTA neutrals, if necessary. There is some indication that some of the EFTA neutralsrealized very clearly that a situation might arise in which the British governmentwould content itself with a face-saving exercise which could involve a generaldeclaration of intent on the part of the French or the EEC itself to consider the economicinterests of the neutrals in due course after British accession. One Britishdiplomat in Bern, for example, informed the Foreign Office about a talk he hadwith the Swiss Federal Councillor, Friedrich Traugott Wahlen, who was“almost desperately anxious to avoid a situation where he would be under pressurefrom his countrymen to call for the implementation of our undertakings. He is toomuch of a statesman to wish for the British entry into the Common Market to bemade impossible and too much of a realist not to see that in such a situation it wouldbe the Swiss and not we who would be in the more invidious position if public opinionin Europe and the United States attacked the Swiss for holding up our entry.” 71Despite these evident weaknesses, however, EFTA changed the external contextin which the politics of European integration was debated in Western Europe after1959, including the Six, and especially in the Federal Republic. One of its effectswas to start a competition between EFTA and the EEC – at the rhetorical level asmuch as at the policy level – about who was following the more liberal trade policiesand so proving beneficial to the development of world trade. Not least in orderto improve their image in the United States, the EFTA states – and especially theBritish government – made a great deal of what they argued were their lower averageexternal tariffs and of their decision in favour of using global quotas which incomparison to the EEC's regime of bilateral quotas gave the same level of protection,but not the same leverage in trade policy.The reality behind the liberal rhetoric was of course more differentiated. Thefigures for average tariffs depended very much on the starting point and the methodof calculation. When German officials and ministers concerned with European policydebated the acceleration issue in spring 1960, they could not even agree amongthemselves as to the quantitative effects acceleration and the early introduction ofthe common external tariff would have on the EEC states' external tariffs. In addition,as Table 2 shows, Britain as a high-tariff country profited greatly in EFTA's70. Caccia (Washington) to Foreign Office: PRO PREM 11/3554 (3 May 1961). See also Kennedy toMacmillan: PRO PREM 11/3555 (22 May 1961). On American European policy see P. WINAND,Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the United States of Europe, New York 1993.71. Grey (Bern) to Jackling: PRO FO 371/164705/141 (28 March 1962).
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