Europe Makes History

Sparkling Spanish wine flowed in celebration in Brussels as the European Economic Community completed the long and controversy-marred process of approving membership for Spain and Portugal.

“This is a historic moment,” said Ernani Rodriguez Lopes, the Portuguese finance minister. “It will reinforce the democracy and boost the economies of our two countries.”

He was right. The expansion is good for the politics as well as the economics of Europe.

The Common Market membership--six nations when the organization was established in 1958, now 10--will become 12 on Jan. 1, embracing most major nations of Western Europe and a population of almost 320 million, with a gross domestic product of $2,485 billion. The community has fallen short of reaching all the supranational goals foreseen by its founders, but it has nevertheless transformed Europe, breaking down many of the old divisions and creating a dynamic economic engine better able to compete with the United States and Japan, better able to assure the economic health of the West that is as important as arms in facing the world’s strategic rivalries.

There is, for all Europe, a special importance in bringing Spain and Portugal into membership. They already are members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, although any delay in Economic Community membership might have encouraged those in Spain who maintain reservations concerning NATO. But full economic participation has been seen as the best possible insurance for democracy for these two countries that had been under totalitarian rule through most of the post-war era.

Their entry will not be easy, nor will it be instantly complete. Transitional arrangements protecting both the present members and the new members are part of the agreement. The market already is struggling with surpluses that will be made all the worse by the entry of the two new members. Spain’s immense fishing fleet, its production of fruit, vegetables and olive oil, and the wine production of both nations complicate gluts that already exist in the market.

Greece, under the leadership of Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou, is insisting on generous special help to tide it through the new competition for traditional products that the enlarged membership will pose. Greece could still veto the expansion during the ratification process that now follows on the summit approval. But Papandreou would face almost universal opprobrium for such an action, not least from Spain and Portugal--now led, like Greece, by Socialists.