European Community

Sweden, which once trod its own path between East and West, now seeks to join the European Community.Known for decades as "the middle way" between East and West -- between collectivism and individualism -- Sweden is shifting. Now that the confrontation between communism and capitalism is dissipating, this Nordic nation is trying to find its place.The new government of Prime Minister Carl Bildt -- ushered in with the Conservatives' historic victory in September's national elections -- signals the change.

A COURT CASE filed in New York last month tells a gripping story involving terrorists and drug traffickers, Swiss banks and the Russian mob, the Italian Mafia and money launderers. At its base is not cocaine or heroin or guns or explosives, but cigarettes. The 10 countries of the European Community have brought suit against the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Holdings Inc., claiming that it knowingly supported smuggling its cigarettes not only into Europe but also into Colombia -- where they helped drug cartels launder money -- and into Iraq -- where one of the prime beneficiaries was Saddam Hussein's son. The suit alleges that Reynolds moved tens of millions of cigarettes into Iraq -- even creating two brands, Easton and Barton, for the market -- despite the trade embargo with that country.

WASHINGTON -- Fending off a trade battle at least temporarily, the United States yesterday postponed plans to impose trade sanctions Monday on the European Community over rules that let public utilities favor European companies in making purchasing decisions.In an unexpected about-face, Mickey Kantor, the U.S. trade representative, announced that he would delay the sanctions for at least eight days so that he could meet with EC trade officials in Brussels on March 29 to see whether the two sides could settle the dispute.

Klezmer, the traditional wedding music of East European Jews, is making a spirited comeback in modern America, and you don't even have to be Jewish to like it."It's wonderful. It's sort of Jewish country music," says Carl Auvil, 77, who was born in a West Virginia town he says was so white and Protestant that the Ku Klux Klan couldn't find anybody to persecute. He finds klezmer foot-stomping enough for the Grand Ol' Opry.Mr. Auvil and his wife, Irene, are dancing to the Machaya Klezmer Band at the Holiday Inn in Chevy Chase.

LONDON -- Prime Minister John Major flew to Rome last night for a European summit at which he plans to change the style, if not the substance, of Britain's objections to European unity.Before leaving London, he told the House of Commons that he would not only protect British interests but would also consider "community interests as a whole."This signaled a shift from the confrontational style of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and showed Mr. Major's determination to play a more cooperative role in developing economic and political union among the 12 members of the European Community.

LONDON -- In a stinging rebuke of the new rulers of the Soviet Union, the European Community strongly condemned yesterday "the removal of President Gorbachev from office," declared the coup d'etat "a clearly unconstitutional act" and voted to cut more than $1 billion in aid to the Soviet Union.The 12 foreign ministers of the EC, gathered in The Hague, the Netherlands, demanded that Mikhail S. Gorbachev be restored to power and that "constitutional order be re-established forthwith."In language surprisingly undiplomatic, the ministers also denounced acting President Gennady I. Yanayev and his cohorts in the military and KGB for their "suspension of democratically elected bodies and censorship of the media," saying that such action "leaves no doubt as to the true nature of the regime that now holds the reins of power in the Soviet Union."

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- European Community leaders gave full support yesterday to demands by France that its system of protecting and subsidizing its movie industry be preserved in any world trade agreement.This subsidy system, bitterly contested by Washington and Hollywood, has become the chief remaining obstacle in the 7-year-old trade negotiations on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).Those talks -- aimed at updating and extending trade rules to stimulate the world economy -- continued in Geneva yesterday, with 116 countries trying to meet a Wednesday deadline.

Following through on a public pledge last month, the Clinton administration released regulations yesterday that will ban companies from nine European countries from bidding for federal government contracts for legal services, certain telephone services and other services.The ban, which takes effect today in retaliation for new European Community rules that discourage sales of U.S. telecommunications equipment there, covers $29 billion a year worth of contracts, said an American official who insisted on anonymity.

PARIS -- The European Parliament suspended nearly $1.5 billion in food and technical aid to the Soviet Union yesterday, delivering a stern condemnation of Soviet repression in Lithuania and Latvia.The parliament's decision to withhold approval of the aid package came a week after European Community foreign ministers warned Moscow against further military crackdowns in the Baltics, following the Jan. 13 deaths of 14 people in the army takeover of a broadcast center in Vilnius, Lithuania.Last weekend, the Soviet army killed five more people when it stormed Riga police headquarters in a drive to reassert control of Latvia.

WASHINGTON -- Chances for reaching a world trade agreement on agriculture before four years of negotiations end next week are "very slim," Agriculture Secretary Clayton K. Yeutter said yesterday."

Paris.The Russian army has marched out of Berlin with panache, taking with it the Cold War -- and leaving Germany with its historical problem: that it lies in the center of Europe.A German official said recently that the goal of German policy today is that the country never again finds itself ''with the West on our western border and the East on our eastern border.'' What Germany wants, he said, is to have the West on its eastern border as well. That is the reason Germany has been so anxious to bring Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia into the European community and other Western institutions.

Washington. -- Rome was not built in a day, and the Treaty of Rome, establishing the bases of European Union has been decades in developing. But, step by step, the construction and integration of Europe proceeds. The first of this year, the single European market was born. The first of last month, the Maastricht Treaty came into effect.Without fireworks the European Community thus transformed itself into the European Union -- the EC into the EU. The citizens of the 12 member-states became citizens of the European Union as well.

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- European Community leaders gave full support yesterday to demands by France that its system of protecting and subsidizing its movie industry be preserved in any world trade agreement.This subsidy system, bitterly contested by Washington and Hollywood, has become the chief remaining obstacle in the 7-year-old trade negotiations on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).Those talks -- aimed at updating and extending trade rules to stimulate the world economy -- continued in Geneva yesterday, with 116 countries trying to meet a Wednesday deadline.

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- The 116-nation world trade talks enter a critical phase this weekend, with political pressure nearing a boiling point and more, rather than fewer, unresolved issues bubbling to the surface.BTC With the central players -- U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor and Leon Brittan, his counterpart representing the European Community -- about to resume their marathon to reach an agreement, a senior U.S. negotiator said yesterday he was "concerned but not gloomy" about the prospects for completing the talks by the deadline Wednesday.

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- With arguments resolved over wheat and corn subsidies, and exports of pig meat and skimmed milk powder, the world trade talks came down to this yesterday: Can the United States tolerate France's determination to go on protecting and subsidizing its movie industry in order to stave off a perceived Hollywood onslaught from the likes of "Jurassic Park" and "Terminator 2"?After almost 23 hours of negotiations with the European Community's chief negotiator Monday and yesterday, the answer from U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor was no.He then left Brussels to explain his views to world trade negotiators in Geneva, before returning to Washington.

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- The United States and the European Community struggled last night to bridge differences that are holding up a world trade agreement, now divided mainly by a bitter dispute over access for American movies and television programs in the European market.Despite more than 15 hours of talks between the U.S. trade representative, Mickey Kantor, and the European Community's chief negotiator, Sir Leon Brittan, officials on both sides reported little progress."What we have up to now is unacceptable," the French foreign minister, Alain Juppe, said.

Two decades ago, Britain was seeking membership in the European Community while demanding changes in its terms. Sweden's late Prime Minister Olof Palme told a reporter for this newspaper that Sweden, in contrast, could accept all the terms of the EC's Treaty of Rome, but not the preamble. Neutrality forbade it. And that neutrality, the cornerstone of Sweden's national policy, was a balancing act. Sweden was acutely interested in what it was balancing between.Sweden's decision to apply for membership in the European Community is a testimonial that the balance of Europe is gone, leaving Sweden little to be neutral about.

PARIS -- American executives, in a series of interviews yesterday, applauded the agreement between the 12-nation European Community countries and the seven-nation European Free Trade Association to create a barrier-free market of 380 million people in Western Europe, saying it would reduce the cost of doing business in Europe and spur the continent's economic growth.For Becton Dickinson, a medical supplies company that has three divisions in Maryland, the accord means that new products it introduces in Europe would have to satisfy one harmonized set of standards, rather than many sets.

NEWSPAPER copy editors aren't the only ones who fret about the proper name for a political institution. Sometimes it's the people who inhabit them, too.As of Nov. 1, the treaty that expanded the powers and functions of the European Community took effect. Remember the European Community -- the EC? It was the successor to the European Economic Community, familiarly known as the EEC (or to Americans as the Common Market). The EEC was the successor, in a fashion, to the European Coal and Steel Community, which was not familiarly known to anyone (and still exists)

"Whether they like it or not, and whether they know it or not, all nationals of the 12 member states of the European Community woke up [yesterday] as something which [Sunday] night they were not, namely citizens of the European Union."So editorialized the Financial Times of London, but it was largely a sardonic observation. On a day devoid of celebration of this ostensibly historic event, the 12 very sovereign governments involved could not even decide whether to call themselves a rather modest "European Community," which they have been for some time, or a more grandiose "European Union."