Change in East Bloc Shifts New Power to West Europe

In a little-noticed but significant development, the radical change unfolding in Eastern Europe is accelerating an important shift of power on the western side of the Continent’s political divide.

The 12-nation European Community, an organization once paralyzed by such issues as cereals subsidies, is emerging as a potentially powerful political force. For example:

-- To the surprise of many observers, last July at the Paris summit meeting, the community’s Executive Commission was given the leading role in organizing Western aid to Poland and Hungary.

-- Last month, West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher spoke of the community playing a pivotal role in a major economic cooperative plan between Eastern and Western Europe. He left open the possibility of eventual EC membership for countries such as Hungary and Poland.

-- Last weekend, Francois Heisbourg, the respected director of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, urged Western countries to “make German unity an issue to be discussed within, and eventually coordinated by, the European Community’s system of foreign policy cooperation. . . .”

“This will become easier as East German citizens thrust the question to the top of the international agenda,” Heisbourg argued in a signed commentary in the International Herald Tribune.

The community’s heightened profile on such issues reflects both a revival of political will among the nations of Western Europe and an end to America’s post-World War II dominance over the East-West dimension of European affairs.

It also underscores the eclipse of Britain and France as individual global players and an awareness in EC countries that, collectively, they can help shape their Continent’s future.

If the situation continues to develop along these lines--and there is little to indicate that it will not--it could alter profoundly the transatlantic relationship that has been the anchor of U.S. foreign policy since the end of World War II.

“The European Community, as it strengthens its institutions, is bound to become the dominant force on the European Continent at the end of the 20th Century,” Peter Ludlow, director of the Center for European Policy Studies here, said recently.

The desire of many member states to guard important bilateral ties, coupled with a potential conflict with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, makes for pockets of resistance to a growing political role for the community.

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, eager to preserve Britain’s “special relationship” with the United States, is lukewarm about the community’s new dimension. But the bloc’s collective economic strength and its “European-only” quality carry an appeal that appears to fit the mood among a majority of Western Europeans to take greater control over their own destiny.

Shift in Thinking

The community’s new role also reflects a sense that in the post-Cold War world, political power will flow more from economic than military base. And by this yardstick, a unified European Community is a considerable force, with a combined gross national product last year of $4.7 trillion, compared to $4.8 trillion for the United States and $2.8 trillion for Japan.

As the two superpowers near agreement on major troop reductions in Europe, the community’s confidence grows. In an interview last week, Jacques Delors, president of the Executive Commission, proposed a summit conference with Washington every six months as a way to develop a geopolitical dialogue and to contain trade disputes that could damage relations.

Such meetings, he said, would include the U.S. President and his secretary of state, the president of the EC Commission and the European leader who holds the rotating presidency of the EC Council.

“It’s a question of better understanding . . . ,” Delors said. “(This formula is) not provocative for anybody.”

Delors appeared to be responding to an idea proposed last May by President Bush, who welcomed “the emergence of Europe as a partner in world leadership.”

“We are ready,” Bush told an audience at Boston University, “to develop with the European Community and its member states new mechanisms of consultations and cooperation on political and global issues.”

The idea of a political role for the European Community is not new. The fathers of the original, six-nation European Common Market envisioned their creation as an essentially political entity achieved by economic means.

This aspiration was reaffirmed in 1985 when leaders of the member states, including Thatcher, pledged themselves to eventual political union.

Until very recently, this vision had been largely a dream. But today it is just one of many dreams breaking into the realm of reality in a rapidly changing Europe. A permanent secretariat to coordinate political cooperation among the 12 countries was established two years ago in Brussels.

Since then, close consultation has further intensified. Foreign ministers from the 12 now meet formally four times a year and twice for a weekend of informal discussions. The result is quicker joint action, even on political issues outside Europe.

Last February, the EC quickly moved to suspend high-level contact with Iran and recall its ambassadors from Tehran after the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued an order to kill British author Salman Rushdie.

Last month, the 12 imposed similar measures against the regime of Panamanian strongman Manuel A. Noriega as a protest over his refusal to respect his country’s electoral process.

But the real importance of the new political dimension lies in Europe itself. As part of its key role in Poland, the Executive Commission will manage funds realized from the sale of emergency food aid to set up and monitor programs that teach such skills as basic business and management techniques, skills virtually non-existent in Poland after 40 years of Communist rule.

This will give the community nothing less than an active hand in restructuring the Polish economy.

Modest Aid

In the overall context of Poland’s economic needs--more than $2 billion by most estimates--the funds generated by the community’s food aid is likely to be modest. But the implications of such a precedent are considerable: For the first time since World War II, West Europeans have assumed a leading role in managing a crisis of an East Bloc neighbor.

“If you wanted to exaggerate to make the point, you could say the Paris agreement entrusted the community with co-management of the Polish economy,” said Stanley Crossick, chairman of the Brussels-based consulting firm C+L Belmont. “I’m amazed that people haven’t recognized the significance of this.”

A U.S. official said the decision was “an indication of the commission’s stature and the recognition it has won,” and added, “A lot has changed.”

Although Bush is described as less than completely comfortable with the arrangement, he was reportedly convinced that a European-led initiative on Poland and Hungary would be less threatening to Moscow than one with the United States in the lead.

West Germany, the community’s economic powerhouse, finds the EC a convenient shelter under which to promote political interests that might otherwise alarm its allies. The community role in aiding Poland and Hungary was said to be Delors’ idea, but it was West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl who presented it in Paris.

EC relations with the Soviet Bloc came only with the recent easing of East-West tension. In June, 1988, the community signed a framework accord with Comecon, the Soviet Bloc trade group, and formal trade agreements with Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia quickly followed. Talks on similar accords are under way with East Germany and the Soviet Union.

At a recent seminar here, Moscow’s first ambassador to the EC, Vladimir Shemyantenkov, said he wanted to expand these commercial ties into a larger political relationship.

In the “common European house” envisioned by Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, people in the East know it is the Western rooms that offer the technology and the goods fundamental to the East’s survival.

The increased importance of the community as it moves toward a single market by the end of 1992 has also triggered debate in the non-EC nations of Western Europe, among them Sweden, Switzerland and Norway, about their relationship with the community. Austria applied for membership last summer.

While individual member states like Britain jealously protect their bilateral relationships with major countries such as the United States, transatlantic ties have already begun taking new form.

Sensitive trade issues, such as farm subsidies and quotas on imported television programs, are no longer handled on a country-by-country basis but through the community.

As border controls ease between EC member states, issues such as drugs, immigration, terrorism and the environment are likely to move increasingly from the national level to the community level, many analysts believe.

“The substance of the relationship between the United States and these countries has changed as a result of the integration of Europe and will continue to change,” Thomas M. T. Niles, the U.S. ambassador to the community, has said.

The community’s member countries, which had always viewed the questions of “how” and “what type” of political union as remote and theoretical, now see them in more practical terms.

“The sense of challenge I feel today is not limited to trade issues, nor to any one country of Eastern Europe,” the community’s external affairs commissioner, Frans Andriessen, told a Helsinki audience recently. “We want to help the proliferation of democracy. What is at stake are prosperity and freedom.”

BACKGROUND: Until recently, the idea of a dominant political role for the Economic Community had been largely a dream, even though the fathers of the original, six-nation Common Market envisioned their creation as an essentially political entity achieved by economic means.