APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200090017-8
politics, but sat on each other's boards and financed each other...
- It is a business hierarchy that resembles the British "Old Boy Network," but with the crucial difference that there is not a breath of amateurism among the Swedish old boys. The Swedes are not playing at business; they are deadly professionals. For all their competitive zeal, they also have a remarkable capacity for teamwork. Like the tycoons of Japan (another nation that conscious that it must "export or die"), they reserve their ultimate weapons of business combat for their foreign competitors, but for each other.
Sweden exports about 50% of its industrial production; its largest corporations produce principally for export. Sold abroad in 1971 were 92% of Svenska Steel's output, 65% of Volvo's automobiles, 70% of Ericsson's telephones and electronic equipment, 88% of Atlas Copeo's pumps and compressors, and 84% of Alfa-Laval's dairy equipment. The Nordic area and the Common Market accounted for 70% of Sweden's exports.
A fundamental goal of Swedish foreign policy is to maintain and expand export markets. The Social Democratic government has generally accommodated big business right up to the point of taking action which would be popularly interpreted as compromising Sweden's neutrality. The industrialists, accustomed to planning well ahead, see Common Market membership as indispensable to their continued prosperity, if not their continued existence. But this determination comes precisely at the junction when the Common Market is preparing feasibility studies somewhat beyond the anticipated economic and monetary integration. A study by Belgian Foreign Office official Etienne Davignon was calling in 1972 for the progressive foreign policy integration of the European Communities and for a common West European defense plan.
There remains a comfortable majority opinion in Sweden against any action that may compromise the traditional policy of neutrality. It seems likely that even if a Swedish government should wish to accommodate the businessmen and seek full membership in the European Communities, it would run into a ground swell of opposition impossible to overcome. Indeed, neighboring Denmark and Norway, whose governments opted in 1972 for full Common Market partnership, were unaccustomedly divided over the issue, each society including significant elements who could overcome their Nordic provincialism. In a plebiscite in September of 1972, the Norwegians by an 8% majority rejected Common Market membership, while the Danes, in their plebiscite the next month, accepted by an impressive two to one margin. Although both are members of NATO, only Denmark seemed reconciled to accepting a closer embrace with Europe to the south. There persists throughout the area a hope that somehow closer cooperation through the Nordic Council will see the small but still prosperous Scandinavian coutries through. The respective business communities may be able to persuade government leaders that they must be able to participate fully in the economic rationalization of Europe, already beyond the planning stage in the Common Market countries. But popular opinion seems as yet reluctant to emerge from Nordic isolation, as the Norwegian plebiscite demonstrated. Sweden, for its part, is trying for an ad interim customs union with the European Communities. But it faces stiff resistance, particularly from France, to the lowering of Common Market tariffs on highly competitive Swedish manufacturers such as steel, which is Europe's best.
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APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200090017-8
