Journal of European Integration History – Revue d'histoire de l'

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).