Formula One and Beyond

by Max Mosley

  The politicians and the commissioner were not happy with this but, given the opportunity, I thought it important to spell out just how useless they had been with thousands of people needlessly dying and being seriously injured on the roads. The measures needed to reduce casualties drastically were well known and many were already in place in countries like Sweden and even the UK. Two of the transport ministers came up to me afterwards and said they fully agreed, as did a number of senior police. The police are always supportive on road safety, no matter which country you go to, because they see what actually happens and have to deal with the aftermath.

  The following year, I was elected ERTICO’s president and spokesperson. Two years later, jointly with EU commissioner Viviane Reding, I became patron of the eSafety Aware Communications Platform. This was a public–private initiative to promote accident-avoidance technologies. It was another attempt to convince politicians and the public that modern electronics are going to be the key to so many road safety and traffic management problems.

  One of our campaigns included a spectacular demonstration of the effectiveness of electronic stability control. Two parallel slalom courses were set up on a surface that had been made extremely slippery. Two identical cars were lined up, one with a world-class competition driver, the other with an ordinary driver. With the electronic stability control switched off in the expert driver’s car, the ordinary driver always won easily. The system is an incredibly effective safety device in difficult situations and quite cheap to fit to a car which already has ABS.7 Our campaign was successful and ESC became compulsory on all new cars in the EU from 1 November 2014. It has already been widely adopted and, according to independent studies, avoided some 190,000 accidents and saved more than 6000 lives across Europe. Global NCAP is now looking at mounting a campaign for worldwide introduction.

  All this time, David Ward was busy in the United Nations and the World Bank, working on road safety. In 2007, encouraged by David, General Kiryanov, the head of road safety for Russia and president of the Russian Automobile Federation, an FIA member club, organised a major event for the Make Roads Safe campaign at the Tavrichesky Palace, the original seat of the Russian Duma in St Petersburg. Delegations from all the CIS countries (those formerly part of the USSR) were present. The hall was unchanged since Lenin made his April Theses speech from the same podium on the tasks of the proletariat in the revolution, all those years ago. I found it an intriguing place from which to make a speech about road safety.

  David was able to progress from this to ensuring that the Make Roads Safe campaign achieved a first-ever United Nations Ministerial Conference on global road safety in 2009 in Moscow, hosted by the then president of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Medvedev. This led to the United Nations General Assembly proclaiming a decade of action for road safety, from 2011 to 2020. It’s pleasing to look back to the moment we began the whole thing in Brussels more than 20 years ago and see the progress that has been made. When the result of that first election to the presidency of FISA was announced in 1991, I had no inkling of where it might all end. Had I been told, I would have been very surprised indeed to learn just how far-reaching our achievements would be.

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  TROUBLE WITH THE EU COMMISSION

  At the FIA we were always aware that our position as sole regulator of international motor sport was a source of resentment and perhaps vulnerable to a legal challenge of the kind we ourselves, as FOCA, had planned back in 1980. So, on the advice of our lawyers, Stephen Kinsella and Ken Daly, we sought clearance of our rules from the European Commission. We knew this would be helpful should anyone challenge our activities under EU law. I had it very much in mind that we had planned just such a challenge against the FIA back in 1980 when we were at loggerheads with my predecessor, Jean-Marie Balestre, and even earlier in the 1970s when we had problems with the Formula One race organisers.

  More than a year passed with no response from the commission so, in January 1997, Alan Donnelly arranged for me to visit the then commissioner for competition, Karel Van Miert. It was a friendly encounter and Van Miert and I were soon on first name terms. At the same time, I had a conversation about road safety with Neil Kinnock, who was then transport commissioner. At first he seemed very onside with what we were trying to do to improve cars and roads, but a short time later his attitude changed, probably because of the fallout from Bernie’s £1 million gift to the Labour Party.

  After the Van Miert meeting, the commission suggested sending an official to a Formula One race to get a better understanding of how it all worked. Our lawyers told us to be careful, but we all assumed the commission was acting in good faith. The commission official thought the most useful race for him to attend would be the Monaco Grand Prix. Although Stephen told him Monaco was atypical and Spa (an hour or two from Brussels) would be much better, he insisted on Monaco. We went out of our way to help him when he came down for the race weekend in May 1997; David Ward took him round the paddock and pits, explaining everything. We now know he had been sent on a jolly and to do a bit of spying. At one point he rather mysteriously said to David that we didn’t realise what we were up against.

  Having enjoyed a very privileged weekend in Monaco, the official left without paying his hotel bill, which came to FF16,900 (€2576). I thought this impolite, to say the least, but when I complained the commission accused me of attempting to damage his promising career. I was very surprised that the commission thought it appropriate for one of its officials to accept hospitality, never mind just take it. As far as I know, no note of the visit ever appeared on the commission’s file. What a contrast with American NHTSA officials who accepted an invitation to discuss vehicle safety over breakfast in our Washington hotel but insisted on paying their own bills. Even basic hospitality such as breakfast was off-limits to them, and in their case there was no question of anything contentious.

  The official later returned to his native Greece, where he became head of the national competition authority. Unfortunately, there was a problem involving a Greek dairy company that complained to the police that it was being blackmailed in a competition case. In 2006, the promising official was arrested with two others, one of them in possession of €200,000 in marked notes, apparently part of a €2.5 million bribe. As a result, he had another stay in accommodation he had not paid for – this time in Greece and for rather longer than he spent in Monaco.

  Not long after the official’s visit, the commission began to show signs of hostility towards us, so Stephen pointed out to them that no complaint against the FIA had been lodged. Amazingly, its reaction was ‘and don’t you find that suspicious?’ When one finally came in, a relieved official told Stephen they had ‘a number of complaints’; when Stephen pointed out it was just one complaint, the commission’s response was ‘Well, one is a number.’

  The complainant was a man who ran a business filming the FIA truck racing championship and apparently supplied footage to any television station that would take it. We were told his production costs were covered by some of the truck manufacturers. He was unhappy that, in an effort to increase television coverage of motor sport other than Formula One, we were trying to get Bernie (who at the time was the vice-president of the FIA responsible for promotions) to deal with television for all other FIA championships.

  It seemed pretty clear to us that Van Miert welcomed the complaint and the probable reason lay in Belgian domestic politics. Coincidentally, in 1997 Belgium banned tobacco advertising and, as a result, there was a threat to cancel the 1998 Belgian Grand Prix. The rumour was that Van Miert’s colleagues in the Belgian Socialist Party had asked him to ‘do something’ in the wholly unrelated competition area where he had considerable power. Whatever the reason, Van Miert now became aggressive. The car industry lobbying and the Belgian Grand Prix problem probably explain the promising official’s rather mysterious warning to David.

  In November 1997, the commission published two notices in its Official Journal detailing summaries of t
he FIA’s notifications and inviting third-party comments. Then in December it sent us warning letters. In essence, the European Commission was saying the FIA had a dominant position in motor sport and was abusing it. The letters set out the commission’s view of possible infringements of EU competition law. They are supposed to be confidential, so we were very surprised to find details of the letters a day or two later in a number of newspapers, including the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal.

  It was quite obvious that the commission had deliberately leaked them. We complained but the officials categorically denied it; yet when we investigated further we discovered they were lying. A commission official had called journalists from the major business newspapers into an office and handed them copies of the letters. It was quite clear the whole thing had been set up and planned in advance.

  Even before we had replied to the commission’s warning letters, in January 1998 Van Miert gave an interview to the Wall Street Journal saying the FIA’s case was ‘the single worst case of antitrust violation’ he had ever seen. For him to make such a statement before he or his officials had seen our response – or had any opportunity to consider the case – was a gross breach of the rules. But our protests achieved nothing.

  In June 1998 there was an FIA General Assembly in Stockholm, where I took the opportunity to tell the assembly what was going on and asked for authority to do whatever was necessary to respond to our treatment by the commission. There was a strong sense of outrage and the assembly agreed unanimously. This was very significant and confirmed my decision to take the gloves off. I was now in a position to launch an all-out attack on the commission should this become necessary.

  I could also threaten the nuclear option (although none of us wanted to use it) of saying the FIA would treat the EU as a single country when allocating events counting for the FIA championships. The remaining 115 FIA member countries would then continue to arrange their affairs as they always had. The FIA was, after all, a world body. It would be for the EU to decide if it wanted to be part of the international motor sport community, in which case it would have to comply with the international rules – our rules. The EU’s position would then have been analogous to that of the USSR before it broke up, with one country holding a number of votes. Our event calendars always had to be representative, and treating the EU as a single country would have meant that more major events would be held outside the EU and the number of Formula One World Championship races in the EU would have been significantly reduced. There would have been more than one, but certainly not ten out of 16, as was the case in 1998.

  Meanwhile, the commission had continued to lie about leaking the letters, even when confronted with incontrovertible evidence. Finally, on 6 April 1998, it admitted the warning letters had indeed been given to the press. Astonishingly, though, it seemed there was nothing we could do about it. Our complaints were simply ignored until our lawyers suggested that the commission’s actions amounted to a ‘decision’. This meant we could treat it like any other decision and submit an appeal against it to the European Court of Justice.

  So, in May 1998, the FIA lodged an action against the commission in the European Court of First Instance. The judge supervising the case could see what a mess Van Miert and the commission had made. He called a meeting in Luxembourg and pointed out that it would be disastrous for the commission to lose. He suggested it should settle, publish a press release (drafted by our lawyers) apologising for the leak and Van Miert’s prejudicial statements, and pay our legal expenses. In July 1999, the commission duly issued a formal public apology to the FIA and paid an unprecedented €40,000 towards our legal costs.

  The previous month, the commission had issued its Statement of Objections. We decided to put the entire statement and our response on our website. The commission objected but we pointed out that, in contrast to the warning letters, this was not a leak – the SO was just like any other letter it might have sent us and our property to do with as we pleased. Publishing the commission’s Statement of Objections was unprecedented (and, as far as I know, still is) but it allowed us to hold up its case to ridicule. An entertaining postscript was that when we had finally settled everything, the commission asked us to take it all down from our website.

  A useful development came in 1999 when allegations of financial mismanagement resulted in the entire commission, including Van Miert, resigning in disgrace. With Van Miert removed, we soon had a new competition commissioner, Mario Monti (later Italian prime minister). He was a well-known professor of economics and was more realistic and far more intelligent than Van Miert who, powerful though he had been, was only ever a small-time Belgian politician. We were optimistic because Monti understood motor sport and the special difficulties and dangers it faced. His Italian background helped: as a small boy he had been in the back of his parents’ car when they gave Fangio, a family friend, a lift back to Milan after he had won the Italian Grand Prix at Monza. Monti Jr was holding the cup.

  Despite that promising development, the same hostile officials were still in charge and the commission’s attitude did not seem to have changed, so we decided to up the pressure. In February 2000, we called a press conference in the commission’s own Borschette press centre and revealed its idea that there should be several regulators for international motor sport, all competing with one another. A reasonably intelligent ten-year-old would see that the only way regulators could compete would be by reducing costs and hence safety. The commission had also said each Formula One team should be free to deal with its own television rights. It seems they hadn’t reflected on the practical difficulties this would cause or considered the next logical step: each of 22 players in a major football match dealing with his or her individual television rights. We handed out a five-page letter I had written to Monti calling for an inquiry and saying the commission had ‘displayed incompetence amounting to abuse’.

  Our criticisms received wide publicity. This was an entirely new experience for DG Comp. The major companies it dealt with were invariably terrified of an adverse decision. Big public companies with shareholders and boards of directors could never attack the commission as we could. Once I had a mandate from the FIA General Assembly I effectively had carte blanche, subject only to following the advice of our lawyers at all times. The commission was clearly shocked by the attack – but what it didn’t know was that Ken Daly had actually toned down some of my more aggressive comments. However, the essential criticisms were still there. It tried to respond with a letter signed by Monti, but it was now clear that Monti himself had become aware of the problem. Once he took charge, an intelligent dialogue became possible.

  Apart from the commission’s strangely irrational approach before the arrival of Monti, another disquieting element was constant pressure on Bernie to reach a deal with the cameraman who filmed the truck racing, as well as with a French race series organiser who complained some time later. The pressure came from an Irish official who had been in charge of our case from the beginning under Van Miert. All his suggestions would have involved payments to those who had complained.

  Although I could understand an official wanting to get a complaint off his desk, it seemed to me improper that he should encourage one party to a complaint to pay off another. Either EU competition law was being broken or it was not. If it was, the commission should take action. If it was not, the commission should tell the complainant he had nothing to complain about. In neither case would a payment by one to the other, brokered by the commission, be appropriate. It would be easy in such cases to feel one was being shaken down with the help of the commission. In the same class was the failure of the commission to see anything wrong in its promising Greek official helping himself to thousands of euros of free hospitality at the Monaco Grand Prix. On top of all this, a woman fundraiser working for the business school at Nyenrode University, in Holland, approached Bernie for money. It turned out that this was where Van Miert was now working following his retirement from the commissi
on. Perhaps the commission saw all this as quite normal, but we didn’t.

  After a further six months or so of detailed exchanges, we reached a settlement with the commission under which the FIA would not participate commercially in Formula One but would retain an exclusive power to authorise international events, issue competition and circuit licences and enforce its rules. This power was recognised and endorsed by the commission on the basis that the objectives of the rules were safety and fairness, and there would be no attempt by the FIA to exploit its powers for profit.

  The commission also accepted that competition between bodies enforcing safety rules would inevitably lead to one body demanding measures that were less expensive, and therefore probably less safe, than its rival in order to get the business of a circuit or event promoter. The idea that motor sport safety might become the responsibility of public authorities fell to pieces as soon as the practicalities of attempting it internationally were considered. And that was without looking at the record of the public authorities in vehicle safety before the FIA got involved.

  The quid pro quo for the FIA’s authority was that we had to be completely neutral between rival series of races or rallies and also between individual events. We had to be prepared to authorise, for example, a rival series to Formula One (or any other motor sport competition) provided our standard requirements for safety and fairness were met. We could charge a fee for our services in regulating each championship but we must not share in any profit. This was to avoid us being in any way tempted to favour one championship over another.

  We made changes to the International Sporting Code to reflect this agreement. Crucially, once these had been made, the commission approved the code as not anti-competitive under EU law. This confirmed the FIA’s power, in an extreme situation, to ban a circuit, a driver or car manufacturer from all international competition. Having this power recognised and accepted by the commission meant that if we were ever faced with an attempt to run a series outside the structures of the FIA, we could bar it and all its participants from all the permanent circuits without any danger that we could be successfully sued under EU competition law. Thus, as explained earlier, if some of the Formula One teams had indeed got together to run their own championship they would have had to run under the FIA and its Sporting Code, including the system of stewards and the FIA’s International Court of Appeal.