Unified-Europe Market Push Raises Fears : Nations Involved Have Different Axes to Grind

In recent months some of Britain’s leading business tycoons have appeared in newspaper advertisements selling not their own products but the prospect of the year 1992.

That is when the 12-member European Economic Community will attempt to form a single internal market free of trade barriers and big enough to counterbalance the traditional economic and industrial dominance of the United States and the thrusting power of Japan.

The action promises both opportunity and danger. To break down historic continental rivalries, almost as bitter in the marketplace as on the battlefield, requires a complex web of compromise.

The British want free trade without loss of sovereignty. The Germans want to penetrate other countries’ markets but are reluctant to dismantle their own barriers. The French see an opportunity to strengthen their domestic economy as well as their international influence while forestalling long-dreaded U.S. dominance.

The smaller countries see themselves sharing a larger pie. The poor ones have already received a promise of more development funding.

How far it should all go is still a matter of intense debate, and considerable difference.

Jacques Delors, president of the European Commission, the Common Market’s executive branch, favors a sort of European superstate in which, within a decade, 80% of central economic decisions will be made in Brussels, Belgium. Britain’s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has dismissed that vision as “airy fairy.” She rejects any notion of the “Identikit European.” She clings to a latter-day Gaullist view of a Europe of separate and distinct nations.

Chancellor Helmut Kohl of West Germany wants a European central bank, a social compact covering common standards for workers’ rights and social programs.

He says: “Europe cannot take shape unless its citizens identify with it. That is why, for me, the social dialogue is a vital part of the living ‘Europe of Citizens.’ ”

Most of the other leaders would side with him. Thatcher will have none of it. For her, 1992 will bring in a single European market but not a United States of Europe.

“From our prime minister’s perspective, 1992 is about extending Thatcherite free markets from a national to a European plane,” says William Wallace of the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House.

He adds: “We are all aware (that) in the American market you have to play by American rules. If you want to have an international economy that is not entirely run on American rules, you have to have a strong European market.”

Britain has consistently been the odd man out in Europe, complaining about loose budgeting and profligate farm spending.

Nevertheless, the British government has spent millions of dollars on an advertising campaign in which the country’s most successful entrepreneurs have urged their less enterprising colleagues to be prepared for what is about to happen.

Already, a rush of takeovers and mergers is under way as U.S. and Japanese companies seek a solid base in Europe and European companies seek a broader continental network, all in anticipation of 1992.

There is resentment here that French nationalized companies are buying a stake in the British private sector, when British companies cannot make counter-sorties into certain sectors of the French economy.

The West Germans are overcoming their traditional opposition to hostile takeovers to seek part of the continental action but seem less ready to dismantle their own monopolies.