Europeans OK Talks to Revise Treaty : Community Plans October Meeting Despite Thatcher Objections

Over strong opposition from Britain, Greece and Denmark, heads of government of the 10-nation European Community voted here Saturday to convene a special conference in October to draft amendments to its founding document, the 1958 Treaty of Rome, with the aim of strengthening European unity.

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher argued long, hard and in vain for two days that leaders of the community, or Common Market, should make a series of simple “pragmatic decisions” now instead of getting into another conference and the problems of treaty ratification.

“This has not been an easy conference,” Thatcher said at a news briefing late Saturday night. “We from Britain came here with high hopes. We are a very practical people. We have negotiated with our partners for years, and we were prepared to take decisions which would have made progress in the community on practical steps forward.

“But we have not made the practical progress we hoped to make. Others have postponed it to another conference. We have taken the view that if we heads of government can’t decide, why should another conference at another level succeed?”

However, in prevailing on a 7-3 vote, French President Francois Mitterrand, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi maintained a solid front against the British.

Determined to Go Further

Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg lined up with them in the determination to go further in changing “the constitution” of the community than Britain is prepared to go.

Never before has a vote been taken in a heads of government meeting to decide any specific question, let alone an issue of fundamental importance such as proceeding to treaty revision. Far from improving the picture of European unity, this summit has reopened the old split between the original six who created the Common Market and the newcomers of the last decade, the British foremost among them.

Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou bluntly told the conference after the vote that his country will have nothing to do with any treaty revision and will not take part in the intergovernment conference.

Although Thatcher was harsh in her condemnation of the meeting’s outcome, she made it clear that Britain will “play its full part” in the conference, although she added that she is very pessimistic about the probable results.

She pointed to the difficulties of reaching the required unanimous agreement on treaty amendments. And she was scornful of those she said had deliberately avoided decisions here because they want to go further later on.

However, Craxi, who chaired this summit at the end of six months of the Italian presidency of the community, called the outcome “a significant success” and declared, “We have today taken a decision that is important, necessary and decisive for the future of a united Europe.”

At the heart of the matter is the issue of how community decision-making can be improved with greater use of majority voting and restrictions on the use of the veto. All governments, except possibly the Greeks, are agreed that with the entry of Spain and Portugal into the community in January, 1986, majority voting must start to become normal practice, if not a fixed rule.

British Agreed to Rules

The British sought to achieve this pragmatically, by agreeing here to new rules under existing treaty provisions. But the original six community members--France, West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg--plus Ireland, want to amend the treaty and take a new look at other treaty articles, which they believe to be out of date.

The continental bloc also wants to draw up an additional treaty on political cooperation in the areas of foreign policy, defense and security that are not covered by the Treaty of Rome--another list of subjects on which the British would prefer to deal, case by case, with cooperative agreements instead of getting involved in negotiations for treaty changes.