ECONOMIC SPOTLIGHT - EFTA FEARS EC MARKET PLANS
The European Community wants to eliminate
all obstacles to free movement of goods, services and people by
1992, a laudable goal that has sent shivers down the spines of
its closest trading neighbours.
    Europe's outsiders -- the six members of the European Free
Trade Association (EFTA), and other small states -- fear the
growing power of the 12 EC member countries, a market of 320
mln people, one and a half times as big as the whole U.S.
    And as the Community celebrates its 30th anniversary, in
non-EC countries from Ankara to Oslo, an attitude is emerging
which says, "If you can't beat them, join them."
    In June 1985, the Community adopted a plan to create an
"internal market" without restrictions, which included new goals
on everything from tourism to the rules of bank accounting.
    The plan is so extensive that even the EFTA countries --
Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland --
with decades of close trade ties, find it hard to adopt a joint
position.
    Last month Turkey formally requested EC membership,
receiving a polite reply from Brussels that the time was not
ripe.
    In Austria, where its 1955 charter of neutrality forbids
joining political alliances, the government is looking for ways
to become a "de facto" EC member.
    And in Norway, where membership was rejected in a 1972
referendum, government officials are wondering whether the
political climate has changed.
    But nowhere has the debate been more existential than in
Switzerland, which has resisted all alliances for 700 years.
    The Swiss are a microcosm of Europe, living geographically
in the very heart of Europe and speaking the languages of the
three big economies -- Germany, France and Italy.
    Swiss neutrality, which has kept the country out of the
United Nations and the International Monetary Fund, would seem
to preclude membership in the Community, given the EC's loose
link with the Western defence alliance NATO.
    But an opinion poll late last year, held in the
French-speaking part of the country, showed a majority favoured
joining the Community.
    Since then, government officials have stressed that, while
membership was impossible, Switzerland should do everything
possible not to be locked out when the trade barriers inside
the EC come down.
    State secretary for foreign trade Franz Blankart, said it
is inconceivable the whole Swiss nation -- including the more
conservative German-speaking majority -- would vote for
membership.
    But Switzerland must be more than just a "satellite," he
said, now that the enlarged Community is extending itself into
areas omitted by the founding Treaty of Rome.
    These areas, including pharmaceutical research and
technological development, are the key to the economic future
of Switzerland and the Community alike, he adds.
    "We cannot permit ourselves the luxury of passively
following the Community's new dynamic of integration," he says.
    The Swiss economy ministry has drawn up a detailed analysis
of the EC White Paper on the internal market, outlining the
Swiss response to each point. While some refer to a collective
EFTA stance, officials admit that on many issues Switzerland
may have act alone.
    The new EC plans on transport, for example, would have a
severe impact on Switzerland and Austria, whose roads carry
most of the traffic between Italy and its EC partners.
    But rules such as the volume of petrol buses are allowed to
carry across a border have much less importance to Sweden or
Finland.
    Switzerland wants to work out ways to help people crossing
its borders with West Germany, France and Italy. But it is
afraid the liberal border controls Denmark, an EC member, has
with the non-EC Nordic countries might pose a threat to
security.
   And pin the fields of banking and insurance -- the very
lifeblood of Switzerland's service sector -- Swiss interests
could prove directly opposite to its EFTA partners with their
pppppppnarrow and tightly protected financial markets.
    The biggest danger ahead, EFTA members have said, would be
that their divided interests might leave the EC free to set
whatever guidelines and standards it wanted and force them on
other European states that wanted to trade.
 REUTER
