During the excitement of expansion, members of the European Economic Community may be forgiven if their comments on Community policy are often more rhetorical than rational. In sober moments European leaders display an awareness of the dilemmas they face in achieving that ambiguous state of grace known as unity. What is less fully recognized is the dilemma the Community presents to outsiders, particularly those who are and wish to remain its friends.

How are we to deal with, how are we to accommodate, how are we to make provisions for this creation which, because it is in the process of shaping itself, does not know what it is going to be? Do we accept it for what it seems to be at this moment, a loose association of sovereign powers which already can exercise some authority in internal matters but is not acting in external matters like the unit it seems to want to be? Or do we make our calculations on the basis of the rhetoric?

EEC spokesmen at times stress the freedom of its sovereign parts.