THE OUTCOME OF THE FONTAINEBLEAU MEETING OF THE European Council in June marked the end of one phase in Western Europe's search for greater unity, and opened another – and potentially more positive – period.
The agreement reached after several years' painful search at last secured a number of long-overdue adjustments to the basic compact between the Community's present ten members, and removed the obstacles to the entry of Spain and Portugal. At the same time it opened up a new agenda for the future. The crucial problems which the current and prospective members of the Community now have to face will no longer be those which have dominated the headlines over the past five years – reform of the CAP, increase of budgetary resources and the UK's contribution to the budget. The central issues will be those concerned with how to develop further the complex of relationships between this group of countries so that their developing union can serve them better and become more effective. Many proposals to achieve this are already Fontainebleau to a new Spaak-type committee makes clear, several of the existing members now seek to make this the beginning of a period as constructive and as decisive as that which in the mid-1950s led to the relaunching of the Six and the signature of the Rome treaties.