The Prime Minister yesterday served notice on the rest of the European Community that her government would oppose tooth and nail any attempt to turn it into an economic and political union in which Britain might have to cede power to EEC institutions.
Mrs Thatcher chose the magnificent setting of the medieval Hall of Bruges to unfold the banner of a British 'Gaullism' in the face of those who want ultimately to see a united states of Europe.
The first reaction of commissioners and other senior EEC officials to Mrs Thatcher's speech was critical. "Frankly I am shocked. It was much more
negative than I had expected," one commissioner said.
Mrs Thatcher consciously followed in the footsteps of the late French President in asserting that the best way to build the European Community was "willing and active co-operation between independent sovereign states" - a
new version of De Gaulle's "Europe des Patries".
Dismissing the idea that the United States might be a model for the future of Europe - as some of the EEC's founding fathers believed - Mrs Thatcher launched a frontal assault on those within the community who want to take some steps towards that goal.
The Prime Minister launched a thinly disguised attack on the president of the EEC Commission, Mr Jacques Delors, who earlier this year said that, over the next few years, the European Community would become responsible for some
80 per cent of all legislation in the Twelve, during which time an "embryo" European government might emerge.
"It is ironic that just when those countries such as the Soviet Union, which
have tried to run everything from the centre, are learning that success
depends on dispersing power and decisions away from the centre, some in the
community seem to want to move in the opposite direction," she declared.
"We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them reimposed at a European level, with a European superstate exercising a new dominance from Brussels."
Dismissing as irrelevent proposals for a European central bank, Mrs Thatcher
said the EEC should remain committed to a free market economy.
"The basic
framework is there: the Treaty of Rome itself was intended as a charter for
economic liberty," she said. "But that is not how it has always been read,
still less applied."
Although the British Government supported the goal of freer trade and movement within the EEC as part of the 1992 internal market, Mrs Thatcher said there was no question of totally abolishing frontier controls, although this was one of the objectives of the Single European Act agreed last year.
Directly contradicting those who argue that internal border controls are bureaucratic irrelevances in the fight against crime and terorism, Mrs Thatcher said they would still be necessary "to protect our citizens and
stop the movement of drugs, of terrorists, of illegal immigrants".
The British Government did want to see Europe develop "a greater sense of common purpose" but, Mrs Thatcher insisted, "it must be in a way which preserves the different traditions, parliamentary powers and sense of national pride in one's own country, for these have been the source of
Europe's vitality throughout the centuries."
The Prime Minister hinted at a growing worry that the United States might be tempted to run down its commitment to maintain vast military forces in Western Europe and underlined her personal commitment to maintaining and
modernising nuclear weapons as well as more effective conventional forces.
She said: " .. it is a question of political will and political courage, of convincing people in all our countries that we cannot rely for ever on others for our defence, but that each member of the (Nato) Alliance must
shoulder a share of the burden."
Although the commission and supporters of progress towards European union were braced for Mrs Thatcher's onslaught, the bitterness of her language came as something of a shock. There was also resentment at her suggestion that supporters of a federal Europe necessarily backed a centralised
authority in Brussels.
"We want to see more power passed down to ordinary people, in the regions and the communities of the EEC," one senior commission official said yesterday. "But would Mrs Thatcher support giving, say Scotland or Wales,
the right to negotiate directly with the community on economic and social
aid, for instance?"
Opinions differ as to whether Mrs Thatcher's language could be taken entirely at face value. "If she means everything she says, for instance, about keeping frontier controls, then we will have another crisis with Britain on our hands before long," one European diplomat said.
"But, in practice, as the recent compromise over the community's budget and farm policy problems showed, Mrs Thatcher accepts the inevitability of community's budget and farm policy problems showed, Mrs Thatcher accepts the inevitability of compromise.
"Maybe all her speech at Bruges was intended to keep her nationalist-minded rightwingers happy while the serious business in
Europe is done more discreetly."