On East-West Economic relations: Does EEC discriminate?

Conclucions

The field is still wide open for all kinds of speculations about the content of future EEC discriminations against the communist countries, but so far there is very little substance to the accusations that EEC is discriminating against them. Neither strategic export controls nor credit discrimination seems to have been affected at all by the creation of EEC. On non-oil products a few individual cases of protection can be cited, and the consultation procedure may conceal some discrimination. But it is important to stress that the reasons for this discrimination are of the same protectionist nature as those behind the chicken war and other protectionist measures against USA, EFTA and other third nations. That the procedures are different-consultations and quotas against the communists and mainly tariff protection against the Western nations-is motivated more by the communist state trading system and its consequences than by special EEC policies.

The only case where some EEC discrimination for non-commercial, political reasons can be suspected is for oil and oil products. The present strict mutual scrutiny of the import policies of the different member countries is likely to continue and to develop into some form of common policy, where security considerations may influence the setting of upper import limits of Soviet oil. But so long as this policy is not made official it is impossible to pinpoint any discrimination.

In summary it can be said that the communist accusations, implying that EEC constitutes an endeavour to hurt the Soviet Union and the “socialist camp” through a discriminatory trade policy, ¹are based more on the possibility that such a discrimination can come into existence than on any evidence that it actually has done so. These accusations are in fact very much akin to the Western exaggerations of actual Soviet economic warfare, based on the fact that the Soviet trade system indeed makes it possible to hide any kind of political warfare considerations inside the system.