True Common Market Is Inevitable, European Leaders Declare

The leaders of the European Communities declared Tuesday that the planned move toward an authentic union of the 12 member countries is now “irreversible” and that 320 million Europeans will become a true Common Market by the end of 1992, with virtually no barriers to the movement of goods and people.

The leaders, sitting as the European Council, issued a statement at the end of a two-day meeting conducted in an unusually cordial atmosphere, where some underlying differences were papered over in order to achieve harmony.

Chancellor Helmut Kohl of West Germany was praised for his presidency of the Common Market for the past six months, a period during which agreement was reached on such issues as farm subsidies and budget sharing.

Even Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain, his sometime antagonist, went out of her way to praise Kohl, saying that he had been “very successful.”

The leaders said in their final statement that the objective of an integrated community, which had been agreed to 1985, is well on the way to becoming fact.

The statement cited major gains in the liberation of capital movement, mutual recognition of professional diplomas, the opening of public contracts to foreign bidders and the easing of cross-border transport.

It said that additional steps are needed, including the harmonizing of taxes and the removal of obstacles to free movement of people. And it said that closer cooperation is needed to “ensure effective measures to combat terrorism, drug abuse and organized crime.”

But while Kohl and some other leaders seemed to be in favor of creating a super-European police force to combat cross-border crime, Thatcher argued that it was better to use the national police agencies already in place.

The leaders acknowledged, however, that open frontiers will make it easier for lawbreakers to move from one country to another.

A potential argument between Kohl and Thatcher was avoided when the leaders agreed to set up a committee of national bank governors to look into the feasibility of creating a European monetary system.

Kohl and others have been in favor of creating a common European currency and a joint European bank, but Thatcher has suggested that such steps should be put off until well into the future, while making other arrangements for improving the monetary system.

The leaders said that the European Communities welcomed the accomplishments at the recent Soviet-American summit meeting in Moscow and promised to “play an active role” in East-West relations.

They emphasized the European goal of achieving stability in the levels of conventional weapons as well as nuclear weapons.

On the question of South Africa, they agreed that every legal option should be pursued to prevent the execution of the so-called Sharpeville Six, who have been sentenced to death for the 1984 killing of a township official.

The leaders also appealed to South African authorities to release black activist Nelson Mandela, a leader of the outlawed African National Congress who is serving life in prison for sabotage, along with other black political prisoners.

Finally, the council agreed to reappoint Jacques Delors, 62, a former French finance minister, as president of the European Commission, the policy-making body of the Common Market, for two more years.