Jan. 29, 1963 - Sixteen months of negotiations for British entry into the European Common Market ended today in failure and bitterness. The end came at the demand of France. Britain and France’s five Common Market partners wanted the talks continued, but France’s right of veto made continuation without her useless. There is no move for a revival. The end of the talks not only means the wreckage of the historic move by Britain to cast her lot with continental Europe; it also leaves a heavy cloud over the future of the Common Market itself. Today’s collapse also leaves in ruins, for the foreseeable future, President Kennedy’s policy of an “equal partnership” between the U.S. on the one hand and an enlarged Common Market including Britain on the other. All of the leading figures today blamed the crisis squarely on French President de Gaulle (pictured with President Kennedy in 1961). Edward Heath, Britain’s chief negotiator, said at a news conference: “The high hopes of so many have thus been thwarted for political reasons by the will of one man.”
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