European Diary, 1977-1981

by Roy Jenkins

  We then proceeded to the Commission room, I introduced him before cameras to all the other Commissioners, and we settled down for a rather formal twenty-five minutes, with expressions of greeting and exchange of views. Haferkamp and I saw him off downstairs, with great mutual expressions of goodwill.

  TUESDAY, 25 JANUARY. Brussels.

  Left home just after 10.00 for my second visit in two days to the Palais de Bruxelles, this time for the diplomatic reception given by the King and Queen for the Commission and for the ambassadors accredited to the Community. On going in I noticed that the Commissioners who were before or round about me walking up the stairs all seemed rather more formally dressed than I was, i.e. wearing black suits, white shirts and dark ties, whereas I was wearing a striped shirt, having been firmly told that dress was informal. However, I need not have worried, for Davignon, who was presumably the most at home in those surroundings of any Commissioner, had also omitted to reduce himself to white, and indeed more significantly the King, when we were taken in to see him, was wearing brown shoes with a very light blue suit!

  George Ball20 and Fernand Spaak (our Ambassador in Washington) to lunch, rue de Praetère.

  In the evening we gave the first of our obligatory Val Duchesse dinners for the Permanent Representatives, other Commissioners etc. to mark the change of Council presidency, i.e. from Dutch to British. A party of fifty.

  WEDNESDAY, 26 JANUARY. Brussels.

  Our longest ordinary Commission session yet: 10.05 to 1.05, and 3.20 to 6.30. It is exhausting presiding for this length of time. The degree of strain is quite different from that of participating as a non-presiding member in the British Cabinet. Apart from the fact that they go on longer in total, being in the chair imposes a different degree of effort, for one is not able to have those agreeable half-hours or so in which to abstract one’s mind from the boredom of the colleagues by doing some forward diary planning or concentrating on some similar matter. That is nearly impossible in the chair, though I noticed that Davignon—not of course in the chair—was wisely doing precisely this at one stage.

  We had Gundelach’s fish issue, then the so-called Complementary Memorandum21 which has to be put before the Luxembourg Parliament at the same time as my Programme speech, and then an interesting but rather sombre debate, so intractable are the difficulties in this field, about the accession of Portugal. During the afternoon we then had about an hour’s discussion on an exposé of Gundelach’s thoughts on agricultural price-fixing. Although the two Frenchmen gave notice that they were not going to give up the tax on vegetable-oil margarine without a fight, he on the whole got a pretty fair wind behind him.

  Towards the end I rather galloped them through a résumé of my speech for Luxembourg; the subsequent discussion politely warned me not to be too encouraging or optimistic. Ortoli and Brunner rather predictably did this, so to some extent did Davignon, and so more surprisingly did Vredeling. He seems to have been converted to pessimistic conservatism fairly early in his Commission career compared with his ebullience of two and a half weeks ago, when he gave the impression that he was going to solve the unemployment problem of Europe at the stroke of a pen.

  Dined with Léon Lambert22 in his large, strikingly furnished apartment above the Banque Lambert. Very good books, beautifully arranged, also five or six good paintings and some remarkable Eastern objets as well. This was my first foray into Brussels society, but, perhaps because he is of le grand juiverie, it was not that of the moneyed cousinage of La Hulpe. The inevitable but agreeable Davignons were there, also Fernand Spaak and his sister Antoinette (the younger Paul-Henri Spaak23 daughter, Marie Palliser’s sister) whom I had not previously met; also a couple of bankers and their wives. Lambert himself was intelligent and friendly.

  FRIDAY, 28 JANUARY. Brussels, Strasbourg and East Hendred.

  The day of my first return to England, but by the rather roundabout route of Strasbourg, for the opening of the new Council of Europe building, which the European Parliament will also use. 10.30 meeting with the Japanese Ambassador, and then an avion taxi to Strasbourg. We drove in to the elegant Hôtel de Ville, where Mayor Pflimlin gave a lunch for about eighty, mainly from the Council of Europe. I had on one side the Turkish Foreign Minister, whose identity I took a little time to discover and who spoke a curious old-fashioned but efficacious French. ‘Plait-il?’ was his favourite phrase but that may have been more a commentary on my French than on his.

  On my other side was Michael Yeats, the son of the poet, candidate for the presidency of the European Parliament, Irish senator, and member of the Fianna Fáil Party. I had a rewarding conversation with him about the difference between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael of which he gave a convincing historical explanation; and also about why Fianna Fáil was linked up with the Gaullists. Partly accident, he said, and partly because they were both nationalist parties, but both believing in Europe and both dedicated to the Common Agricultural Policy.

  Pflimlin made a gracious but too long speech after lunch and was replied to by Garret Fitzgerald, as the chairman of the Council of Europe Council of Ministers, speaking very good French. Then to the new Palais de l’Europe, where we assembled to greet Giscard at 3.30. He did not seem on very buoyant form, though he was perfectly gracious in the few words which I had with him, and made a show of interest as we went round the building. The so-called hémicycle or chamber was rather good; the rest of it, and particularly the exterior, was not inspiring. Six preliminary speeches, including mine which came third. It was at least shorter than most of the others, who all, except for Garret Fitzgerald who was under time, overran their time by 100 per cent or more. Spénale, the French President of the Parliament, made a considerable oration in the old Herriot style. Giscard spoke rather elegantly for half an hour, giving the impression that he was always about to say something of importance, but never did so.

  Avion taxi to Northolt at about 7.00. I gave David Owen, who was deputizing for Crosland, a lift back. In the midst of more agreeable bits of intelligence he told me that he thought I would have difficulty with Callaghan about the presence of the Commission at the Summit. East Hendred at 9.20. The strangeness of being back after a fairly long and traumatic period was not as great as I would have expected. It all seemed rather normal.

  MONDAY, 31 JANUARY. London.

  Ladbroke Square24 at 10.30. Harold Evans of the Sunday Times came. On the way out it became clear that he was in a great state of tension and pressure. The Sunday Times didn’t seem to be doing very well, the top management regime was more difficult since Roy Thomson’s death and there was obviously a tendency to blame Evans for the troubles. They had also become rather frightened of the competition from the new Observer.

  To Lancaster House at 3.00 for my first Political Cooperation meeting.25 I had been told that it was much more intimate than the Council of Ministers and so I suppose in a relative sense it was: in other words there were only about one hundred people in the room as opposed to the two hundred-plus that one has for a Council of Ministers. Nonetheless the table was large enough and the crowd was great enough for it to be a fairly formal session. It was well conducted by Crosland and we almost galloped through the business, dealing, rather superficially, with about six items between 3.15 and 6.15. The main dispute was as to whether we should issue a statement on the Middle East. The American Government, though not at an enormously high level, were firmly against our publishing a statement at all. With Genscher’s26 rather skilful help they got their way.

  After the meeting I took Garret Fitzgerald with Crispin for a drink at Brooks’s. This proved a well-spent half hour, for in the course of it we evolved a successful idea for lancing the Irish grievance that they had lost their one Director-General by creating a new one for fish.

  We then returned to Lancaster House for the dinner and post-dinner discussions. This was devoted to a substantial discussion about the admission of Portugal. I opened saying that we recognized the political imperative but that we were determined tha
t the real economic difficulty should not be glossed over, as it had been with Greece.

  The discussion afterwards was inconclusive and interesting mainly from the personality point of view. Genscher was good and weighty, though perhaps not tremendously constructive; Thorn27 and Fitzgerald described rather good circles in the sky but it was not clear what they amounted to; Guiringaud28 was half difficult though personally agreeable, and intervened rather skilfully at the end to make sure that the conclusion did not go any further than he wanted; Forlani29 was opaque; Van Elslande30 talked too much and made a lot of jokes in rather bad French, but didn’t get anywhere. Crosland, who had been very good in the afternoon, I thought jollied them along slightly too much as though they were members of the Grimsby Labour Party General Management Committee, but maybe that is what they like. However, he seemed in perfectly good control.

  THURSDAY, 3 FEBRUARY. Brussels.

  Dinner at a very good fish restaurant enlivened, if that is the word, on the way out by sensing a slight feeling of embarrassment amongst the staff, which was indeed well founded, as we saw on the ground floor—we had been eating on the first floor—the upturned soles of a Japanese who seemed at least unconscious and possibly dead. When we got outside an ambulance drew up and a stretcher was rushed in. We asked Ron Argent, our inimitable driver, whether he knew what was happening. He said: ‘Oh, yes, certainly, oyster poisoning. Quite often happens, but the restaurant is insured against it, so there is no need to worry.’

  FRIDAY, 4 FEBRUARY. Brussels.

  A deputation from the European trade unions at 10.45. About twelve people, in some ways a strong deputation. Vetter, the principal German trade unionist, in the chair, flanked by Jack Jones31 and various others. Jones in the most agreeable, butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-his-mouth mood. Vetter was difficult to form a view about—courteous, slightly withdrawn, giving the impression, of which indeed I had read, of deteriorating relations with the German Government. A matching deputation in the afternoon from UNICE, the employers’ body; less strongly represented as only three of their presidents out of the nine turned up and I was able to get through the meeting in about an hour or so. Though a nominally less strong deputation, some of their points were harder. At 5 o’clock I saw Douglas Hurd32 about direct elections.

  During the course of dinner, I had what might be described as my first Brussels emergency telephone call. Noël rang up to say that there had been a tremendous snarl-up in the junior COREPER (not ambassadors but their number twos) because during the meeting in the afternoon all the Nine had agreed to something which was unacceptable to the Commission as it did not meet our prerogatives under the Treaty in the arrangements for negotiating with the Russians. He wanted to have a Commission meeting the next morning. I resisted this on the grounds that a formal Commission meeting, even if it could be arranged, would inevitably attract publicity and a heightening of the atmosphere, and said it was much better to have an informal meeting in my own room at 11 o’clock for which he could get as many of the Commissioners as seemed relevant.

  SATURDAY, 5 FEBRUARY. Brussels.

  Into the office about 10.30. Talked to Crispin, read a slightly legalistic paper from Noël, and started the meeting at 11.00. Only two Commissioners arrived—Gundelach, whom I had seen on the way in and who implied that a nonsense had been made and that we could sort it out, and Davignon. Haferkamp’s Chef de Cabinet said he had been unable to find Haferkamp in the previous sixteen hours. The meeting was slightly confused, partly because Gundelach was slightly confused, giving at different times differing impressions. Davignon saw it in very good proportion, saying that this was a typical bit of nonsense, but that although it was nonsense it was important to get it right. But he had seen so many similar nonsenses from his position in the Belgian Foreign Ministry on the other side of the table that he was a connoisseur of them, although this on the whole was one of the more nonsensical snarl-ups.

  After about an hour’s rather rambling meeting we managed to get a line and agreed that Gundelach should immediately summon Maitland,33 the British Permanent Representative (Chairman of COREPER) and put a new formula to him. It was typical of the sort of problem which arises in the Commission. In a sensible national government no one would dream of summoning the Foreign Minister for a Saturday morning meeting on such a relatively minor issue, though it probably wasn’t a bad idea for me to have to deal with a problem typical of one aspect of the Community’s convoluted life.

  MONDAY, 7 FEBRUARY. Brussels.

  Received credentials from the Kenyan and Costa Rican Ambassadors in the morning. The main point of interest the latter produced was that Costa Rica with a population of just under two million had no fewer than forty-five missions abroad, although only about thirty of them, he assured me, were headed by ambassadors. Nonetheless it was an extraordinary figure and, given the fact that their income per head is $750, must mean on a quite conservative estimate of the cost of a mission that 3 to 4 per cent of their national income goes on diplomatic representation abroad—God knows why!

  At 4.30 I had the Israeli Foreign Minister, Yigal Allon. He complained about the Community being too friendly to the Arabs and our agreement with the Israelis not being good enough, etc. I then asked him if he would like to stay alone for ten minutes, feeling that I slightly owed him this in view of the day he had given us on his kibbutz fifteen months or so ago, and he then talked with some interest about the Israeli internal position. He thought that Rabin would maintain his position as leader of the Labour Party and therefore probably as Prime Minister after the elections, in spite of a fairly strong challenge from Peres. He himself was strongly in favour of Rabin, who he thought was a much wiser man, even though a less superficially attractive personality or good talker.

  Of the forthcoming visits to the Middle East, he said he was awaiting Vance’s with interest. He would also be glad to see Genscher. He thought that Waldheim’s was a waste of time, and that on the following day he might well have to advise Guiringaud to put his off for a few weeks, as the atmosphere might be too hostile. (On the following day, however, he did no such thing, but patched up a truce with Guiringaud and said that he would be very welcome.) Allon said that the fact that the Israeli elections were impending did not mean that there could be no progress on a Middle Eastern settlement at the moment; he would be perfectly prepared to go to a reconvened Geneva conference before 17 May, provided that he was not expected to agree in advance what the results of the conference would be. I stressed that it was very important that he did not lose what might well be an opportunity during the next few months which would not recur.

  TUESDAY, 8 FEBRUARY. Brussels and Luxembourg.

  Foreign Affairs Council which concerned itself almost exclusively with Portugal until I left just before noon. No real debate of substance, although the underlying tone implied that a good deal had been learned from our discussion over dinner in London the week before. Haferkamp did rather well for us, and intervened forcefully. The issue was unresolved when I left, but was finally concluded, at about 7.00 that evening, when Crosland, Guiringaud and Haferkamp worked out a compromise draft.

  Genscher behaved characteristically during the morning. He appeared suddenly, spoke to Dohnanyi34 and left after about seven minutes, not having said a word to the meeting. The purpose of his journey from Bonn was not altogether clear, but when I asked Thorn of Luxembourg about this later he said it was to be explained by the fact that Genscher has television obsession. He therefore comes for these very brief visits in order to get televised walking in and then goes off and gives television interviews to as many German chains as he can find and hopes to get televised again on the way out.

  Then a very rough flight to Luxembourg. Hayden was nearly sick, but recovered fairly rapidly after we got on the ground and was reassuringly able to eat a perfectly hearty lunch. In the afternoon I delivered my so-called ‘Programme speech’ to the Parliament. It took fifty-four minutes, to a house which was about three-quarters full and moderately r
esponsive. Getting this speech over was a great relief. A Programme speech, at any rate at this stage in the life of the Commission, really is an appalling task as it is impossible to work out and get together firm hard proposals, and therefore the whole thing has to be a sleight of hand in which you are pretending to be more specific and interesting than can in fact be the case. Thanks to a great deal of work, mainly by Hayden, we escaped without disaster, got a reasonably favourable press, although some complaints from members that it had been vague, unspecific and bland.

  The Conservative Group had me to dinner at the dreaded Aerogolf. This Group is in reality a purely British concern, although they manage to find one Dane who will affiliate to them. As a result they count as a Group, as opposed to a collection of individuals, and are able to get all the finances and secretarial services which go with being a transnational group. They were thoroughly agreeable. Peter Kirk,35 who was in the chair, was as always a highly intelligent neighbour, and we then had an interesting general discussion.

  THURSDAY, 10 FEBRUARY. Luxembourg and Brussels.

  All-day discussion on my Programme speech. I replied for thirty-five minutes in an unprepared debating speech. In the luncheon interval I entertained Thorn at the Restaurant St Michel. Prime Ministers of little countries do not mind eating in public in their own capitals. Those of big ones do.

  Back to Brussels by the evening TEE.