840.20/5–2753: Circular airgram
No. 251
The Acting Secretary
of State to Certain Diplomatic
Offices1
In the course of discussions at the Department of State during his recent visit, Mansholt, the Netherlands Minister of Agriculture, emphasized that the consideration of agricultural integration in Europe had now taken an unfortunate direction. He said that at the last European conference on this subject in March, 1953,2 there was a clear disposition on the part of most representatives to consider agricultural integration only in terms of the interests of agricultural producers, and to ignore its broader economic implications, including the impact on consumers and industry. Little consideration was given to the creation of a genuine common market for agricultural products, the emphasis being on the establishment of limited commodity agreements of a type which would protect high-cost producers.
While Mansholt did not think there would be concrete results from the working group which will follow up on the March agricultural meeting, he noted that any such results would almost certainly be bad from the standpoint of the overall Dutch interest, or the interest of other countries concerned with Europe’s progress towards economic integration.
Mansholt considers that the agricultural sector of the European economy is so large and its economic impact so ramified that a common market for this sector cannot be developed apart from a more general economic integration in Europe which would take [Page 445] into account the balance of payments, tax, fiscal and other problems which would inevitably require solution. The Dutch Government strongly favors such a general integration of the European economy.
The above information with respect to agricultural integration should be taken into account in any informal discussions which U.S. representatives may have on this subject. The U.S. Government is disappointed at the trend of European thinking on agricultural integration as described by Mansholt, since it is not likely to lead to the kind of arrangements which the U.S. could support. In this connection your attention is called to the text of the U.S. statement contained in Repto Circular 33 of March 21, 1952, on the type of European agricultural arrangements which would be in line with U.S. objectives.
- Drafted by Boochever; cleared with Burk, Lyons, Department of Agriculture (Schwenger), and the Mutual Security Agency (Jacobsen); and sent to Paris (for Embassy and SRE), Rome, Bonn, London, The Hague, Brussels, Luxembourg, Athens, Geneva, Bern, Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm, Lisbon, Vienna, Dublin, Ankara, and Reykjavik.↩
- For a summary of this Green Pool meeting in Paris, see Document 249.↩