The final effacement of British national sovereignty will probably take place in December at the European Economic Community summit in Maastricht, the Netherlands. John Major, Britain's prime minister, will remove his famous Biro from his breast pocket and initial away the birthright of his people. The traditional doctrine of national sovereignty, passionately defended by Margaret Thatcher, will be dead.
To judge by the way the intergovernmental conferences are proceeding, the twelve members of the EC will sign a treaty this year to establish a monetary bloc before the end of the decade. The British government has accepted that Britain will benefit from some saving clause enabling a "future parliament" to take the final decision on the abolition of sterling. The British government's leverage stops there. Britain cannot prevent the others in the EC from going ahead outside the Treaty of Rome, by creating a separate Treaty of Monetary Union; when the time comes, one suspects, it will be difficult to stay aloof. How has Britain been so cornered? How is it that its ministers and their mandarins seem so, well, impotent?
The European Community, alas, is still ruled by France. French control has increased, is increasing, and shows no sign of being diminished. As the pressure tightens on their monetary jugular, Britons along with others in the EC and the world should realize that a Euro-bank controlling the supply of money in Europe, were it to happen, would be just the latest, if the most decisive, triumph of the French civil servants, in particular those who went to the elite Ecole Nationale d'Administration (ENA), the "Enarques." To speak of conspiracy is not quite right. It is a chess-like genius for thinking ahead, and dressing up French national interest as the European dream.
