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European Community is published on behalf of the Commission of the European Communities. Into the eighties pages3-6 London Office: 20 Kensington Peggy Crane recalls Community Palace Gardens, London W8 4QQ Tel (01) 727 8090 achievements in 1979 and singles out challenges for the 1980s Cardiff Office: 4 Cathedral Road, Cardiff CF! 9SG Tel. (0222) 371631 Sun Power pages 7-8 Solar energy could provide a lifeline Edinburgh Office: 7 Alva Streel , Edinburgh EH2 4PH for developing countries Tel. (031) 225 2058 lnlended to give a concise view of Reforming the Commission pages 9-11 current Communily affairs and The Spierenbourg report stimulate discussion on European recommends streamlining before problems, it does nol necessarily reflecl 1he opinions of the new member states arrive Communily institulions or of its edi1or. Unsigned articles may be Jobs pages 12-13 quoted or reprinted withou[ Work-sharing and sandwich payment if their source is acknowledged. 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Tel. 27 61 4576 2 European Community January / February 1980 Peggy Crane recalls Community achievements in 1979 and singles out challenges for the 1980s As the new decade progresses, the affect all Community countries and generation that knew the inter-war years cannot be solved in isolation. To cope of the twenties and thirties and the Second more effectively with the crisis that World War will fade from the centres of threatens, a Community approach has political power, to be replaced by those much to offer. with no sense of the fear, drama and While Britain is not alone in the change those years involved. They cannot Community in defending what she sees as see the European Community as its vital national interests, a more founders saw it. They have no guilt for the communautaire approach by all the past. partners in the 1980s could produce In the eighties, the Community will results of benefit to all Community have to merit its own existence without, citizens. on the whole, the enthusiastic impulses that drove it into being. The next ten 1979 - not a bad year years, therefore, are a crucial time for the Despite disappointing average economic development of the Community. If it performance, 1979 was a year of survives them strengthened and even considerable achievement, providing the moderately successful, there will be no basis of Community activity for much of turning back. the eighties. Although several of the For many British people the European major innovations were the result of long Community exists only in terms of the UK gestation, their satisfactory conclusion is contribution to its budget. The danger for part of the record. the UK is that concern over this one issue • The launching of the European will totally blind the nation not only to the Monetary System (EMS): While the responsibilities of membership of the principles governing EMS were adopted in Community, but to any realistic 1978, the scheme did not start properly appreciation of what the Community until March 1979. It is designed to stands for or could achieve. stabilise member currencies within fixed The budget row has already limits; to establish the European Currency overshadowed the positive gains Unit (ECU), representing the same basket engineered by the Community in 1979, of currency units as the European Unit of and ignores the problems ahead, notably Account (EUA), as the numeraire in the possible consequences of unrest in the exchange rates; and to create a European Middle East and its effect on energy Monetary Fund within two years. Britain supplies. North Sea oil cannot save is not yet a member of the EMS (although Britain if the rest of the Community is in a it takes part in the scheme's partial state of economic collapse. Even without pooling of gold and currency reserves), such an international crisis, slow but in the first six months of operation the economic growth, high unemployment EMS behaved remarkably like the zone of and the threat to traditional industries monetary stability that it was set up to be. European Communily January/February 1980 3 The only currency that showed marked the earlier preferential treatment for ACP signs of fluctuation was sterling! At its agricultural products in the Community meeting in Dublin in November 1979 the market, and extends the principles of the European Council stressed the need to stabilisation of export earnings scheme improve co-ordination of the economic (STABEX) to include certain minerals. and mapetary policies of member The Community will contribute about countries, and confirmed the intention to 6,000 million EUA (£3, 700m) to the go ahead with the European Monetary financing of the new Convention through Fund. the European Development Fund. • The Tokyo Round (GATT): The • Elections to the European Parliament: Council of Ministers has approved the The first elections to the Parliament were results of the Multilateral Trade held throughout the Community on 7-10 Negotiations (MTN) concluded under the June. The 410 MEPs are already Tokyo Round of the General Agreement beginning to exercise their political muscle on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The new in relation to the other Community agreements took effect on 1 January 1980. institutions, notably by rejecting the EEC Except for safeguard mechanisms, wheat budget for 1980! This means that the and coarse grains, the MTN largely complex budgetary procedure has to start achieved the objectives which the again and meanwhile the Community has Community (with the Commission acting to live from month-to-month on the basis on behalf of the Nine) had set itself at the of last year's budget. beginning of the negotiations. Without • Energy: Oil is now a major that united clout the results would have preoccupation of the Western been less satisfactory. industrialised world. Both at the The major achievement, agreement by European Council in Strasbourg on June the USA, Japan and the Community to 22-23 and at the World Economic Summit reduce tariffs by about one-third over the on June 28-29 oil headed the agenda. At next eight years, should encourage trade both meetings, Heads of Government took and give the Community wider access to important decisions to ensure more its competitors' markets, while the moderate and rational use of oil, and adoption of a series of codes and legal confirmed that there should be target texts on customs valuation, anti-dumping, limits on oil imports between 1980 and subsidies and compensating duties, 1985. The Community target was to hold licensing procedures and so on, should imports during this period to a yearly level contribute to more orderly trade in the equal to or less than the 472 million 1980s and provide a check to the tonnes imported in 1978. At the beginning protectionist reflexes which could of December, the Council of Ministers otherwise be unleashed on world trade. agreed the ceilings for each of the Nine. The Community also played a positive On 10 December, all members of the role in ensuring that the needs and International Energy Agency, including problems of developing countries were the USA, followed suit. taken into account in the negotiations. The Energy Council also agreed to a • Lome II: The Convention, signed on monitoring procedure of oil imports. At 31 October 1979 in Lome, Togo, by the the end of July, the Council approved a Community and 57 African, Caribbean second four-year energy research and Pacific (ACP) states, comes into programme the main emphasis of which force on 1 March 1980 when the first will be directed towards methods of Convention (Lome I) expires. Described energy conservation and the development by M. Cheysson (the Commissioner of solar energy. Tenders for responsible for the negotiations on the demonstration projects in the field have Community side), as 'an impressive already been called for. package' and 'an advanced model for • Enlargement: Negotiations on Greek relations between industrial and entry into the Community were completed developing countries', Lome II builds on in April 1979, and Greece will join as a 4 European Community January/February 1980 full member on 1 January 1981.