European Diary, 1977-1981

by Roy Jenkins

  The atmosphere was very friendly, the Americans making it absolutely clear how keen they were to work closely with us and what nonsense they thought it that we were being excluded from the preparatory meetings for the Summit. Carter gave the impression of being well structured both physically and mentally. He has a neat body, in spite of his odd face, holds himself well, moves compactly, and conducted a tight meeting.

  After it was over we went to the State Department, I riding with Vance in his car, and discussing on the way a mixture of gossipy items and subjects of real importance. Lunch, again about eight a side. Blumenthal, Strauss and Cooper95 were there, the first two not having been present at the White House. Quite a good, general discussion at lunch. After lunch half an hour’s talk with Vance alone in his room. I decided to repeat to him what I had said to the President about Schmidt. I think that he is fairly cool about the French, although he is anxious to have tolerable relations.

  He expressed great admiration and affection for David Owen, said that he got on very well with Genscher, but found Guiringaud by comparison stiff, rigid and very unwilling to go in any way outside his instructions or to engage in a relaxed conversation. I said he was lucky not to have had to deal with Sauvagnargues.96 He also agreed that Carter and Schmidt, certainly if they set themselves to it, would get on thoroughly well together, but that relations between Carter and Giscard were likely to be a good deal more difficult. Vance also told me, almost with incredulity, although I heard it with no such incredulity, that they had had semi-official protests from the French Government about having very briefly received Michel Rocard, the number two man in the French Socialist Party, at the State Department.

  After this meeting Vance escorted me down to the front of the State Department and I returned to Blair House for a brief pause before a meeting at 3.30 with Robert Strauss, the new Special Trade Representative, who called upon me there. Quite a good meeting with him. He, as at lunch, was very anxious to recall our previous encounters and to establish a relationship of personal friendship, and, although obviously a political ‘pro’, should be more than tolerable to deal with on the personal level. He does not know much about Multinational Trade Negotiations97 yet (nor do I) but he has people who do and will probably pick the subject up quite quickly. He is clearly determined to make a personal impact in this field, which means pushing the MTNs to a successful conclusion. He took the Trade job rather reluctantly but having done so will want to make the most of it.

  I then set off for a more formal meeting, with more people present, with Blumenthal at the Treasury. Blumenthal was accompanied by his Under-Secretaries, Solomon and Bergsten, and chose to talk a lot about North/South CIEC (Conference for International Economic Cooperation) matters. Despite their choice of subject they were not wholly well-informed, certainly not Blumenthal, who had not much applied his mind to these matters, and nor on one point was Solomon, who had. They both, however, gave the impression of being quite impressive intellectually, and Blumenthal was very good on trade matters, though knowing less about monetary affairs.

  Back at Blair House I had an hour’s visit from Teddy Kennedy which was partly politics and partly gossip. He looked very well and seemed perfectly reconciled to his new role of being a major senator, but not a figure with any likely immediate presidential prospect. I asked him if he still managed to find time for instance to do much speaking around the country, and he said, ‘No, there isn’t much point, and as a matter of fact I don’t now get many invitations.’ He was reasonably friendly towards Carter, not overboard about him, but not bitterly, irresistibly critical like George McGovern.

  That evening we gave our dinner party for about forty at Blair House. The Vances came, and also the Charles Schultzes (Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers), as well as some other Government figures, Richard Cooper, etc. It was difficult, however, to get people from Congress and of the three or four legislative notables whom we asked, I think that only Rhodes, the Republican Leader in the House, turned up. However, a lot of old friends, like Harrimans,98 Bruces,99 McNamaras, Arthur Schlesingers,100 came with apparent alacrity. The food was not very good and the drink (provided by the house) entirely American. David Bruce, when we lunched with him the next day, retaliated by giving us Haut-Brion 1945!

  TUESDAY, 19 APRIL. Washington and Chicago.

  A walk from 7.15 to 8.00. Then back to Blair House for a Voice of America programme followed by a meeting with Henry Owen on the preparatory work for the Summit. Then a press conference at 11.30, followed by one or two individual interviews and the Bruces’ lunch with Joe Alsop101 and Ben Bradlee (editor of the Washington Post) at 1.15.

  At 2.30 I went to see Tip O’Neill, Speaker of the House, who in some ways is a caricature of a Boston Democratic politician, but at the same time quite different from his equally Bostonian predecessor, McCormack. He was for instance extremely impressed when he discovered that I had a Harvard honorary degree–it must be said that his constituency embraces Cambridge—whereas McCormack would have been totally unmoved by that and thought it a typical bit of eastern establishment international frippery.

  Then a good meeting with a selection from the Senate Foreign Affairs and Finance Committees. About twelve senators present, mostly important ones. Hubert Humphrey presided, his appearance having changed most dramatically since his illness. He now looks like a death head mask, shrunken, but at the same time seemed for the moment fit and vigorous. Also Russell Long, Frank Church, Abe Ribicoff, Jack Javits, George McGovern and a number of others I knew less well. We talked around for about an hour or so. Then from there to the British Embassy where I did a debriefing with the ambassadors of the Nine, and direct from there to the 7.30 plane to Chicago, arriving in a thunderstorm, with a slow drive in from O’Hare to the Whitehall Hotel, the Drake being full.

  WEDNESDAY, 20 APRIL. Chicago and New York.

  Lunch speech to the Council on Foreign Relations. Only about a hundred people, almost entirely male and business, but a fairly receptive audience who produced a very good question session afterwards. The speech itself was rather long, about thirty-five to forty minutes, but also went quite well despite (1) my cold and (2) a curious indifference on the part of those present to my reference to Adlai Stevenson, who had been chairman of the Council for six years in the thirties. Afterwards a quick visit to the Art Institute opposite, which was as spectacular as I had remembered it, then back to the hotel, followed by a tedious one-and-a-quarter-hour drive to O’Hare. This, however, was nothing compared with the tedium at O’Hare itself, which really is the major disadvantage of the otherwise splendid city of Chicago. We moved off from the terminal about forty minutes late and then proceeded to sit on the ground for another one and three-quarter hours, so that when we got to New York we were two and a half hours late. To the Plaza Hotel.

  THURSDAY, 21 APRIL. New York.

  Recorded an ABC breakfast programme with John Lindsay,102 whom I was pleased to see again. A call on Waldheim at the UN at noon. Having heard very little in his favour, I found him somewhat more impressive than I had expected. He was not very interested in or knowledgeable about economic affairs, which he left to his French deputy who was present, but he talked well about political issues like Cyprus, Southern Africa and the Middle East.

  Lunch with Newsweek at the Century Club, typical of all these American editorial luncheons, in that six or seven people do nothing but ask questions and therefore do not, I think, get nearly as much out of one as they might do if they contributed rather more to the conversation themselves. Afterwards to the office of the Communities’ Mission to the UN for a debriefing of the ambassadors of the Nine to the UN. Then our dinner which Arthur Schlesinger had organized in the new Windows on the World restaurant on the 107th floor of the equally new Trade Building. The Mac Bundys103 and Betty (Lauren) Bacall epitomized the guests.

  FRIDAY, 22 APRIL. New York and East Hendred.

  Day plane to London, and East Hendred by 11 p.m.

  WEDNESDAY, 27 A
PRIL. Brussels.

  Commission for five and a quarter hours. Quite long, a lot of business transacted but all rather easy, a gentle stream meandering in an agreeable way through a rather flat landscape. Lunch in the middle for Mountbatten,104 with Tindemans and Simonet as Belgian guests, Plaja,105 the Italian Permanent Representative, and Michael Jenkins. Mountbatten talked well in set pieces. He had to leave at half past two and I then stayed another half hour or so listening to Tindemans and Simonet warily purring at each other. It was a crucial day for the formation of the new Belgian Government. Tindemans very much wanted the Socialists, and particularly Simonet, in the Government, and Simonet himself very much wanted to be in the Government. The points at issue were that Tindemans wanted Simonet to be Minister of Finance, while Simonet wanted to be Foreign Minister, and that Tindemans wanted the Socialists and the Liberals to come into a grand coalition and the Socialists wanted to keep the Liberals out and have the Communal parties in their place.

  THURSDAY, 28 APRIL. Brussels.

  At 12.45 to the COREPER meeting in the Charlemagne building where we marched in and sat down facing the chairman, flanked by the other ambassadors, as is the routine, and Donald Maitland read out their report on the agenda for the next meeting of the Council. I deliberately made practically no comment on this and then said to him afterwards that, while I valued the luncheons and his calls upon me, I thought that these meetings were absolutely useless and I proposed not to go to them in future. He said he quite agreed, although he hoped very much that the luncheons would go on. This one was enjoyable, as I gave them at their request a Washington briefing and was able to have quite a good tease of both Maitland and Nanteuil about the ploys of their respective governments in trying to keep us out of the Summit preparatory meetings and trying to keep away from us documents which the Americans had been only too pleased to show us.

  FRIDAY, 29 APRIL. Brussels.

  I received the King of the Belgians for his somewhat postponed visit to the Commission at 11.30. We had a Commission meeting with him for about one and a quarter hours, in which I introduced all the Commissioners to him, described what they each did and said a few words of welcome. I then asked first Haferkamp and then Cheysson to introduce a slightly but not excessively artificial discussion about North/South relations, followed by Davignon on the problems of the steel industry. After Davignon, Vouël, Tugendhat and Giolitti spoke. Everybody did rather well; perhaps particularly the King who asked some very sensible questions in his diffident way and seemed thoroughly interested. Then a lunch, at which I talked half to him bilaterally and then widened the discussion for a further talk about a whole range of Community issues. We broke up at about 3.00 after a surprisingly successful and worthwhile occasion.

  At 4.30, Hallstein,106 the doyen of ex-Presidents, came in for an hour. I went down to meet him at the front door. He was physically feeble, so that it took about five minutes to walk from the top of the lift to my room, and even longer for me to walk with him at the end from my room to Emile Noël’s room. But he seemed thoroughly bright and alive in mind and was friendly and informative to talk to. I tried to discover how different things were in his day and got some impression. The Commission was a smaller, more intimate, tauter body. He was in the habit, he said, of addressing all the staff from the level of A2 (Director) and above after each important event, which might be two or three times a year. The Council obviously worked somewhat better and more intimately. The Parliament, he claimed, played almost as great a part in the life of the Commission as is the case now, although I remain sceptical about this. He never worked in the Berlaymont and clearly and rightly hated it as a building.

  SATURDAY, 30 APRIL. Brussels.

  Perhaps the first real spring day. Drove via Ghent to Breskens where we took the ferry across to Vlissingen and through Middelburg to Veere, where we lunched sitting at the window in an old tower looking at an inlet of the sea speckled with sailing boats on very sparkling water. Then another walk along the dikes after lunch and then back by a different, further inland ferry and through St Niklaas and into Brussels by 6.30.

  MONDAY, 2 MAY. Brussels.

  A Mitterrand107 visit at 11.30. Cheysson had approached me four or five weeks earlier and said that Mitterrand would like to visit the Commission with one or two of his Socialist collaborators; would this be agreeable to me, and would I give him lunch? I said, ‘Yes, certainly, I would be thoroughly glad to see him, just as I would be to see Mrs Thatcher or Kohl.’ Cheysson then asked me to keep the matter confidential until he had taken further soundings with Mitterrand, and I did not therefore speak to Ortoli or anyone else. But while I was away over Easter and in the United States, the Cheysson cabinet, merely discovering from my office that I would be in Brussels and free, and without consulting me, arranged the date of 2 May.

  When we were informed of this in the United States I immediately sent Michael Jenkins to inform Ortoli, whose reaction was not enthusiastic but not violently hostile either. I then saw Ortoli when I got back and explained the position to him. He was still rather reserved about it but said it was much too late to put it off; he did not think it would do great damage (in Paris); we should try to play it in as low a key as possible. This indeed was what I endeavoured to do without erring on the side of discourtesy. I did not give Mitterrand anything like head of government treatment. I did not go down and meet him. I received him in what is normally my dining room, and did not invite photographs, although he came accompanied by a great barrage of press and television cameras. I then had an hour and a quarter’s meeting with him at which Natali, Haferkamp and Cheysson were present throughout, with Davignon and Gundelach joining us in the course of the meeting. I had been particularly anxious that there should be a political balance of Commissioners and had therefore swollen the numbers by inviting Natali and Davignon as Christian Democrats. Gundelach was not on the original list, but Cheysson had particularly asked for him to come.

  The meeting started slightly stickily–Mitterrand is not the easiest man to deal with–but improved as it went along. He made a good, clear statement about the French Socialists’ commitment to direct elections and their opposition to the Gaullist/Communist view that these should be accompanied by a commitment to no further extension of the powers of the Parliament. On other matters, however, he appeared fairly unsatisfactory. He was very reserved about enlargement, accepting without enthusiasm the Portuguese application, was firmly opposed to Spain, and disinclined to accept that we were irreversibly down the road with Greece. He made a lot of anti-American and protectionist remarks, and generally gave the impression of a complete Gaullist of the Left. He did, however, express himself firmly in favour, no doubt partly on anti-Giscard grounds, of the Community’s presence at all parts of the Summit.

  At lunch afterwards nearly all the other Commissioners turned up–I couldn’t easily prevent their doing so as they all wished to meet Mitterrand. Ortoli, who had hovered and havered, eventually decided to turn up, and behaved thoroughly graciously. At the meal there was partly bilateral conversation between Mitterrand and me, during which I found him more easy and agreeable than during any previous encounter. He talked frankly and sensibly about his own position, saying two things in particular. (1) He thought that short of some international upheaval, i.e. some uprising in Eastern Europe or some great Yugoslav crisis, it was as certain as could be that the Left would win in France next spring and that he would then have to be asked to and would form a government under Giscard. (2) So far as 1981 was concerned, he expressed the view, rather to my surprise, that he might well be too old and it would therefore be a mistake to assume that the 1981 presidential election would take the form of a contest between him and Chirac108 At the end of lunch I avoided speeches by turning the conversation into a general discussion. He left soon after 3.00 and I said goodbye to him at the top of the lift shaft.109

  TUESDAY, 3 MAY. Brussels.

  Foreign Affairs Council with a special restricted session on the Summit. David Owe
n told me privately beforehand that the final proposition from London was that I should be excluded from all the Saturday sessions which would deal with the general economic matters in the morning and then with non-proliferation in the afternoon. This was not satisfactory, but not a great surprise. When it was announced, all the Little Five expressed themselves very strongly against the arrangement. The Italians and the Germans said nothing and Guiringaud kept his head down. I argued the complete illogicality of the division. This part of the meeting was fairly but not very bad-tempered. David summed up in an embarrassed way saying that while it was a compromise it was bound, like all compromises, to be slightly untidy, and somewhat self-pityingly complained that others did not show sufficient sympathy for the extremely difficult position in which the British presidency had been placed.

  I was besieged by British pressmen on the way out, who regarded this as a setback from the Rome position. But it was not really much worse than I had expected and I therefore tried to play it fairly cool. Then to a state dinner given by the King of the Belgians in the Palais de Bruxelles for Houphouët-Boigny (President of Côte d’Ivoire). The dinner itself, for about two hundred people, was very grand, in a splendid room, with all the style of Buckingham Palace. I sat between Tindemans, with whom I had an extremely interesting and agreeable general conversation, and Madame De Clercq, the wife of the Finance Minister, herself a fairly leading lawyer in Ghent.