European Diary, 1977-1981

by Roy Jenkins

  THURSDAY, 16 MARCH. Brussels, Luxembourg, Liège and Brussels.

  To Luxembourg by car at 10.00. By the time I arrived to lunch with Thorn I was feeling more or less human for the first time since leaving New York. He was rather late for lunch, having been to Brussels for a meeting that morning and flown down in a delayed and bumpy aircraft. It was not quite clear why we could not have lunched in Brussels. Crispin said the answer was that the Luxembourgeois attach importance to being visited in their own country, which I suppose is understandable.

  Thorn quick and quite funny as usual, but deeply depressed about everything and therefore becoming too cynical and hopeless, as at one stage I gently pointed out to him. He was even slightly sceptical about direct elections, though this is a good deal linked with his worry about Luxembourg losing the Parliament as a result of the bigger membership. He was depressed about the post-French election prospect, not about what he thought would be the outcome of the next round, but because he thought even the Giscard victory would leave a divided, weakened and hesitant France. He was fairly sceptical about any move forward from Schmidt. I hope I managed to cheer him up a bit towards the end.

  Drove to Liège for a dinner speech, and back to Brussels at 11.30.

  FRIDAY, 17 MARCH. Brussels.

  An additional meeting of the Commission from 10.10 until 12.25. It produced a rather good discussion on the draft of the ‘fresco’46 enlargement paper. Then to the Hôtel de Ville for my official visit to Brussels, which began by my being shown the treasures of the city, which indeed are quite magnificent in the form of tapestries in particular, but furniture, panelling, paintings, as well. Then to the Maison Patricienne, a little eighteenth-century house belonging to the Ville de Bruxelles, where we had an agreeable lunch. A speech at the Hôtel de Ville but not, fortunately, at the lunch.

  SUNDAY, 19 MARCH. Brussels.

  Spent nearly the whole day preparing a 1500-word letter to heads of government, which was intended to ring some alarm bells and create an apprehensive but adventurous mood for Copenhagen.

  MONDAY, 20 MARCH. Brussels.

  A meeting with Cheysson for which he had asked the previous week and which I had deliberately postponed until after the result of the second round of the French election. He was in a buoyant, agreeable, sensible mood, and said that the result was for him a political disappointment, but a personal relief as well. In a Socialist Government he would certainly have been Foreign Minister (Mitterrand had confirmed it to him only three or four weeks before), but this would have been extremely inconvenient for his family, and therefore he did not personally mind the outcome too much, particularly as, so he claimed, he was greatly enjoying his Commission work. He was also in a buoyant mood about the Commission, thought we were doing much better now and generally making a good impact in the press and elsewhere. It was Cheysson at his best. He was also sensible about French politics, thought it was a considerable personal victory for Giscard, which he hoped he would exploit by consolidating the centre.

  Went to the Ecofin Council at 12.30 to listen to Ortoli presenting his paper, which he did well, and then lunched with them, an occasion at which no serious business was done, though I had a quite interesting talk with Lambsdorff47 on my one side and, on the other, Boulin,48 the French minister who had narrowly scraped home at Libourne. At the resumed meeting of the Council, Denis Healey talked too much, as even Ortoli remarked to me. He embroiled with Lambsdorff in a highly counterproductive way, which merely had the effect of driving the Germans into a more stubborn corner, resulting in the press the next day giving the impression that they had firmly repulsed British, or indeed any other, pressure to make them move further in an expansionary direction.

  TUESDAY, 21 MARCH. Brussels, The Hague and Brussels.

  8.37 from the Gare du Nord to The Hague. A slightly depressing journey in horrible weather, the Low Countries looking very low. No breakfast car, contrary to the indications. At Rotterdam the train broke down. However, a good meeting with van Agt and van der Klaauw,49 the Foreign Minister, followed by lunch with a lot of ministers and general discussion. I like the new Dutch Government even more than the old one. 2.10 train back to Brussels for a deputation of five Arab ambassadors—the Moroccan, the Jordanian, the Syrian, the Egyptian and the Somalian—who came to see me to protest about the Israeli invasion of the Lebanon. I just listened.

  WEDNESDAY, 22 MARCH. Brussels and London.

  Commission meeting 9.30 to 1.30, and got through a long agenda without the need for an afternoon session. Then a late lunch with COREPER, which was better than most of these luncheons. More grandes lignes, less trivia. I told them of my letter to heads of government, which they took perfectly well. Then back to the office to see Ortoli and show him my draft, with which, with a few minor amendments, he expressed himself content, and then saw Davignon for the same purpose. 6.25 plane to London. Dined at the Gilmours with Carringtons, Gordon Richardsons and Peter Jenkins (but not Polly).50

  FRIDAY, 24 MARCH. East Hendred.

  My new library being complete and my ankle still precluding any other exercise, I started on two days of obsessive book-arranging. Quite hard work physically, but even harder mentally, as it is always difficult to decide how to categorize books and where to place them. However, as a result of about eight hours on both this day and the next I managed to get it more or less complete.

  MONDAY, 27 MARCH. East Hendred.

  Gordon Richardsons to lunch, both of them very friendly and forthcoming. I gave Gordon my letter to heads of government to read after lunch, and, although I am not quite sure how precisely he took it in, he seemed generally favourably disposed.

  FRIDAY, 31 MARCH. East Hendred.

  Another depressing day of pouring rain, as throughout this Easter holiday. Lunch at home. A thirty-five-minute telephone call from Callaghan just before 6 o’clock. We had a reasonably satisfactory, fairly friendly, pre-European Council conversation. He was mainly concerned to tell me how well he had got on with Carter in Washington and how he had put his five points to him and had them well received, etc.51 I was concerned to see what effect Schmidt had had on him a few weeks before. I decided that they had passed like ships in the night, Callaghan being concerned only to get Schmidt’s blessing, or at least friendly acquiescence, for his visit to Washington, and not concerned to listen to what Schmidt had to say about European monetary stability. Equally, Schmidt had been more concerned to tell him about this and had probably not appreciated the extent to which Callaghan’s mind was more on transatlantic approaches. I tried to open up his mind on the Schmidt point, but I suspect with only marginal success.

  SUNDAY, 2 APRIL. East Hendred and Brussels.

  The David Watts to lunch, he having recently moved from the Financial Times to his new job as Director of Chatham House. Both of them very good luncheon guests. I left just after 4.30 for Brussels. Just time to go to rue de Praetère and get to the Palais des Beaux Arts to receive the King and Queen for the European Youth Concert at 8.20.

  The Youth Orchestra played remarkably well. Heath conducted the first short part, mainly the overture to The Meistersingers, and then after a rather long interval Claudio Abbado came on and conducted Mahler’s Sixth Symphony. It was the first time I had heard Ted conduct and he appeared to me to be perfectly competent, although there was an element of Dr Johnson’s dog about it. When Abbado took over afterwards there was not unnaturally a certain marked difference of style, quality of definition, etc.

  A reception afterwards for the King and Queen, Heath, various ambassadors, etc., and then most of the others adjourned to a party at the British Embassy, but I went home for a late supper, rue de Praetère, with Laura, the Tickells and the Phillips’, during which we settled the final draft of the perhaps over-prepared letter to heads of government.

  MONDAY, 3 APRIL. Brussels and Luxembourg.

  10 o’clock meeting with the Chinese Foreign Trade Minister before the joint signature by him and Haferkamp of our ‘framework’52 trade agree
ment with the Chinese. He delivered a pressing invitation to me to visit China, which I intend to do before the end of the year or at the beginning of next year. Avion taxi to Luxembourg, giving a lift to K. B. Andersen and the main Danish officials. Had them to lunch at the Golf Club until 2.30, when Andersen left to preside over the Foreign Affairs Council, in which I spent the afternoon. Tugendhat did well on the budget. It was a useful and friendly discussion with Andersen, as usual.

  At 6.15 we had an hour or so’s negotiations with the Greeks, which was a curious procedure, less formal than on some previous occasions as there was some substantive negotiation, yet all done rather jerkily, as indeed was bound to be the case with the neurotic Papaligouras negotiating from one end of the table next to me in this huge room. I then dodged the formal dinner with the Greeks and dined instead, enjoyably and successfully, with Simonet—it was his party—Dohnanyi and Lahnstein, a junior but highly able German State Secretary.

  TUESDAY, 4 APRIL. Luxembourg and Brussels.

  Foreign Affairs Council all day. Simonet and Dohnanyi are becoming the dominant and most effective figures in this body.

  The Council rather ground on during the afternoon. Davignon did a fluent and informative but over-long exposition of the steel position. I decided to leave at 5.15 as everything seemed in reasonably good shape, even the difficult Japanese issue, on which Haferkamp, contrary to what I had believed at first, had done right and shown cool nerve by signing the communiqué with the Japanese ten days before. Train to Brussels.

  WEDNESDAY, 5 APRIL. Brussels.

  Commission from 10.15 until 12.40. Then a Commission lunch for Emile Noël’s twenty years as Secretary-General. I spoke very briefly, got Haferkamp to make the main speech, as he had been there the longest and I had already done a tribute in the Commission in the morning. Emile replied with tears in his eyes.

  Commission again from 3.30 until 6 o’clock, with a preliminary run-through of the enlargement ‘fresco’. Then received an ETUC deputation, a somewhat formal occasion, as they were having a day of symbolic European strike against unemployment. Afterwards half an hour’s pre-Copenhagen Summit talk with Ortoli, during which I had to steer a fairly difficult course as I was still not free to tell him all that had passed between Schmidt and me, yet wanted to give him some steer so that we could approach Copenhagen together on good terms. I was equally not able to tell him that I was sending a document to Schmidt, prepared largely by Michael Emerson, which contained our proposals for a possible immediate advance, grouping the other currencies round the Snake, but keeping the Snake, using the European unit of account as a reference point and envisaging interventions in this way between Community currencies and, indeed, in dealings between Community currencies and the dollar. That document went off to Bonn by special messenger that afternoon.

  Rue de Praetère dinner party composed of Simonets, Tugendhats, Haferkamps, etc.

  THURSDAY, 6 APRIL. Brussels.

  A day of preparation for the European Council interspersed by a series of visits de tous azimouts. At 10.301 had Sir Mark Turner of Rio Tinto Zinc to see me. He at least was very quick. At 11.15 I had the Prime Minister of Cape Verde, who was perfectly agreeable, but no more. At 12 o’clock I went to see Tindemans, whom I had not seen for a little time, to talk over with him the prospects for the European Council. As usual a good, friendly talk with his saying that he was going to present some proposals for currency advance, which I knew had been prepared in the Belgian Finance Ministry and which were agreeable to us (though in the outcome he did not do so).

  Then back to the Berlaymont, where Harold Wilson had arrived. He wanted to come to Brussels in connection with his City of London inquiry,53 and I was naturally happy to receive him. I had him met at the airport by a cabinet member (Etienne Reuter), and Hayden talked to him until I got back from Tindemans. I had Haferkamp, Noël, Vouël, Crispin, Hayden and Donald Maitland to lunch with him, and most of his conversation must I think have been totally incomprehensible to the three non-British present, as it was full of muttered asides about recondite details of English politics, which hardly anybody except him and me, and not always both of us, could be expected to understand. He was anxious to be very friendly, including producing some wonderful flights of fancy, such as that he had specially timed his resignation in order to be as helpful to me as possible, so that I could have the run which he knew I had to have, but which he feared would not be successful, and still take the European job.

  However, he was at pains to urge me not to cut myself off from British politics now. I might well be needed in the future, he said. Callaghan was too old, Owen was too young. The whole outlook was very bad. He was filled with dismay. He did not think there was much future for the Government, or indeed the Labour Party. A coalition government would almost certainly be necessary; he would bless it from outside, but not serve. I, however, would undoubtedly be needed. Taking all this with several pinches of salt, I kept the conversation going in a way which I trust was reasonably agreeable to him, and indeed I believe was so, except when we got on to the question of voting or non-voting in the Commission and I compared it with voting practices in the British Cabinet. He looked most pained and said, ‘There was never voting in the Cabinet in my day.’ I allowed fantasy to triumph over fact and did not pursue the matter.

  After lunch Wilson went to see Ortoli, I saw David Marquand and did a little work, and then took Wilson down to the front door.

  FRIDAY, 7 APRIL. Brussels and Copenhagen.

  Avion taxi to Copenhagen, accompanied by Ortoli, Crispin, etc. To the Royal Hotel. I worked hard in the plane and a little in the hotel on an opening statement, although I was not quite clear when it would be made or what the exact order of business would be. Soon after 12.30 Ortoli and I drove to the Amalienborg Castle for the Queen’s lunch. I was rather reluctant to go so early as the invitations only said 1 o’clock, but protocol, police, etc., were insistent that that was the right time to arrive for the photograph. Callaghan arrived as I did, and immediately got into a very bad temper, not particularly with me but in general on discovering that the other two ‘big ones’ had not turned up, and that Schmidt indeed was not due to touch down at the airport until about five minutes later. All the little ones, plus the Italians, had, however, assembled.

  Schmidt eventually arrived at 1.20, followed by Giscard at least seven minutes after this. Gaston Thorn had typically and correctly pointed out that there was no question of Giscard arriving before Schmidt and that probably his car was tucked into a side road on the way in from the airport waiting to see Schmidt go past. If so he might at least have come along a minute or two behind him. However, they all seemed tolerably tempered during lunch at which I sat between van Agt and Genscher and had a better conversation with Genscher than ever previously.

  We then went to the Christiansborg for the opening session of the Council, which occupied itself with rather minor items of business for an hour. Then the heads of government and I drove out to Marienborg, a nice castle about twenty miles from the centre of Copenhagen (plenty of castles in Denmark). We were supposed to start there at 6 o’clock and I arrived about five minutes early on a most beautiful evening. However, we did not start until 6.30 not, as Thorn again suggested, because Callaghan would this time be at least half an hour late in order to get his own back (in fact he was there on time, as on this occasion were Giscard and Schmidt), but because van Agt was extremely late. We eventually had to start without him, and when he was then asked at dinner if he had got lost or if he had mistaken the time, he blandly said no, he had been having a press conference and the Dutch press were the most exigeant in the world. Rather a good cool performance, I thought.

  When we started there was no one in the room except for the ten of us and a chuchotage interpreter for Andreotti. Later a Danish official came in, I think because Jørgensen was not fully understanding all the rather complicated exchanges in English and was getting understandably worried about losing the drift of the matter for the
record which he would subsequently have to provide.

  Jørgensen opened very briefly and then I spoke for about fifteen minutes. Callaghan and then Giscard spoke for about the same. And then Schmidt went off into one of his long soliloquies, which with a certain amount of interruption took forty minutes. It was mainly about the problems of the German economy in an improvident world, but it contained one or two splendid side-swipes, such as complaining at one stage that he could not understand English English. Mine was the worst, Callaghan’s almost equally bad, Lynch’s an improvement, but only Giscard’s impeccably pellucid. After this, Jack Lynch alone was able to get in about a seven-minute speech before we adjourned for dinner just after 8.00.

  It had been a good-tempered, analytical, slightly gloomy discussion. Giscard was the most constructive in opening up some lines for the future. He did a rather good analysis of the six groups in the world, the three parts of the developing world and the three main groups in the industrialized world, ending up by saying that of the three industrialized groups we in the Community had recently done by far the worst for growth and general economic performance, and that he could not dissociate this deterioration in our performance from the new era of world currency instability, with us the only one of the three developed groups which had such instability not merely between us and the other groups, but internal to our Community itself. It was a helpful analysis.

  However, in this part of the discussion we did not get very near (except for some trailing remarks on my part) to discussing any hard scheme for advance towards a possible exchange-rate bloc. Schmidt at this stage intended to hold his hand until the tripartite breakfast he was having with Giscard and Callaghan the following morning. As recently as ten minutes before the start of the session he had told me that these were his tactics and that while he did not mind how much I opened the subject up, I should not expect him to say much in even such a restricted session as the one which we were having.