To the Charlemagne at 1.30 for lunch there and the beginning of the European Council. The heads of government turned up more or less on time and we got down to a working lunch by 2 o"clock. This was partly concerned with the agenda, although the shape of this was not discussed sufficiently rigorously, and partly with general economic problems, during which Giscard threw out the sensible idea that the Commission should produce a study of the shape of the European economy in relation to the world division of labour in 1990, to which I gladly acceded.
The Council session began at 3.45. Quite unexpectedly, instead of being a short session leading on to a meeting of heads of government and me, as had been the successful pattern at Copenhagen and Bremen, this developed into a long, grinding niggle which ran until 8.15, dealing almost entirely with the internal mechanics of the EMS. There was a lot of slow argument about detailed pointsthe balance between short- and medium-term credits, a semantic argument about the "presumption of intervention", or stronger or weaker words, when a currency was on the margin of divergence, and an Italian point, which caused a lot of difficulty, about a request for a specially loose obligation of repayment in the case of "involuntary debtors".
It was all detailed and in my view manifestly soluble stuff, which should never have been allowed to take so long and block us from what were clearly the more difficult points about transfer of resources. It was also all done without anybody being asked to make a firm declaration of position as to whether they would come in and, if so, in what circ.u.mstances. Callaghan was never throughout this four and a half hours asked to say whether or not he was joining the central mechanism; and he volunteered no information. Schmidt chaired this long session, as he chaired the Council throughout, with good humour, detailed patience and a certain shrewdness, but without in my view having satisfactorily thought out his game-plan for the two days.
Dinner in the Palais d"Egmont, with only the heads of government and me, from 8.45 until 11.30. This at least settled the "Three Wise Men". Giscard firmly proposed Marjolin. There was a certain amount of havering about who the Dutchman should be. The Italians suggested that a Greek might be appointed (Andreotti had tried this out unsuccessfully on me on the previous Tuesday, but didn"t press it hard when it was not well received by the others). Callaghan turned down Heath, I think understandably in his position, and Soames and Thomson for less adequate reasons, and then suddenly produced the name of Edmund Dell. This was not very well received because everybody except Schmidt said that they had never heard of him; but he was eventually supported by me on the ground that he was an admirable man even if somewhat anonymous, and it then went through.
The Brinkhorst suggestion seemed to have died for we heard no more of it, but there were two possible Dutch names, van der Stoel, on whom I have never been very keen because of his rigidity, and Biesheuvel,64 the man who was eventually appointed. It swung away from van der Stoel because as Dell and Marjolin were nominally members of Socialist parties (though I told Giscard that in fact I knew Marjolin had voted for him and not the Socialists at the last electionabout which he, Giscard, was doubtfully pleased in the context) it was decided that the Dutchman had to be right of centre.
The question of Euro-MPs" salaries was also settled, after a good deal of misinformed comment, on the basis of the lowest common denominator, i.e. national salaries but European expenses, which will no doubt be a good recipe for organized hypocrisy.
Then we went back to the Charlemagne for a continuation of the Council from 11.45 p.m. until 2 a.m., everybody getting tired though not particularly bad-tempered. We ploughed on through the remainder of the mechanism of the working of the System, actually reaching decisions on most although not quite all points.
I went to bed at 3 o"clock, feeling neither particularly satisfied nor overwhelmingly dismayed. I thought it was all very slow and in danger of losing both momentum and direction.
TUESDAY, 5 DECEMBER. Brussels.
The European Council began at 10.20 a.m. and proceeded to sit with no proper adjournment but occasional breaks of twenty minutes or so until 9.20 in the evening. Again, strategic chairmanship was lacking. There were altogether four brief breaks, but no lunch was served at any normal time; eventually cold meat and gla.s.ses of wine were brought in at 4.15.
We got on to the concurrent studies issue at a fairly early stage in the morning. We had a quick tour de table, but it was not done in any very sensible order. The Danes and the Belgians who came first had nothing much to say. Callaghan had at last to make it clear that he was not coming in to the central mechanism and therefore was in no position to ask for much. The Irish and the Italians asked for a good deal, the Italians probably for rather too much, though I am not certain that this was a major tactical error. They asked for 800 million units of account a year (in interest rate subsidies), but as they could well have expected at least half of that there was something to be said for a high opening bid.
Giscard then made it clear that he was unwilling to contemplate any such sum. He climbed on Callaghan"s back to block effectively and decisively the Regional Fund window, because Callaghan made it clear that the British would not give up their 27 per cent share. Giscard then said, "Well, that being so, perhaps even without that being so, the French, who were asking for nothing special and who were taking on the full obligations of the System, could not contemplate giving up their share." But even beyond that, if the Regional Fund were to be increased he would have to ask for a larger French quota, which had always been in his view desirable for France and indeed had been recommended by the Commission in the early days. Therefore there would have to be a renegotiation and that being so it was quite impossible, in view of what the British had said (and in view of what he had said), for there to be any advance at this meeting on that front, and so we might as well stop talking about it.
This, though depressing, had manifest force with two major countries in a blocking position. We were therefore forced to concentrate on the other point, the subsidized loans, with the subsidy bunched in the early years so as to amount to a sizeable initial grant. Schmidt suggested a total, to be divided between Italy and Ireland, of 400 million units of account a year I think it was over a three-year period that it was then contemplated. Giscard then said he couldn"t go over 200 million, so the whole elaborate construction looked as though it was grinding to a halt. Andreotti and Lynch looked extremely depressed, Andreotti"s head sank even further into his body, and poor Jack Lynch was almost on the verge of tears.
Schmidt made a gloomy little speech saying that it all seemed absolutely hopeless and he wasn"t sure that it was worthwhile going ahead with EMS at all, Germany would be better off without it in any case. I then intervened for about five minutes saying that so far from anybody being better off without it, the whole Community would be in a disastrous position, far worse off than if we had never launched the scheme. The sense of dismay, disaffection and falling apart would be overwhelming; we would find everything else, from enlargement to handling the directly elected Parliament, much more difficult to deal with. It would be a worse moment than for many years past. Giscard did not like this much because it didn"t suit his book, and he said coldly that he did not share the rather dramatic interpretation of the President of the Commission, but I think that most other people thought I was right.
At this stage we had an adjournment. Both the Irish and Italians told me that the expectation of their public opinion was such that they did not think they could possibly go ahead on this basis. Schmidt came up to me in rather a gloomy way, rather agreeing with my cataclysmic speech, and we had a long friendly talk, my saying, "Why don"t you put greater pressure on Giscard? You and Giscard are the parents of the scheme, you have this special relationship, surely you can do something about it." "No, I can"t move him on this," he said. "His internal position is too difficult." It remains my view, however, that throughout this Council Schmidt did not press Giscard nearly as hard as he ought to have done.
Somewhat at my suggestion, Andreotti asked for a bilateral meeting with Giscard during this adjournment, and told him that his Government might well fall whether they went in on these terms or whether they stayed out, and that therefore one could have a position exactly in line with what I had said about things being at this stage much worse than if we had never started the enterprise; we would have Italy unable to come in but with its delicate political balance gravely upset as a result of the difficult choice presented to it. However, my suggestion of this bilateral was not a good idea. It did not go well, Giscard merely saying that in view of the Italian position maybe they would be better to take a British point of view and remain outside the mechanism for the time being, which was neither helpful nor, in my view, sensible.
We then resumed and went round the table rather gloomily once again. Schmidt proposed a compromise (he would certainly have gone, as he made clear to me, much further himself) by which we should do 200 million of subsidies for five years and that this should be concentrated on the two countries and divided between them according to whatever formula seemed appropriate. He asked me for one and I eventually said that two to Italy and one to Ireland might seem appropriate. This was accepted but we ground on for hour after hour on the total sum. Eventually 200 million for five years stood as the final offer, even though the Italians and Irish were still looking extremely miserable.
The whole issue had in fact become ridiculous, whether looked at from either one side or the other. What was perfectly valid in the French (and ?German) point of view was that the sum we were discussingthe difference between 200 and 400 million units of account shared between Italy and Irelandwas certainly not going to make the difference to the ability of those countries successfully to come into the System and stay there. On the other hand, the contributions required to ease the way in of Italy and Ireland by giving them the cosmetic presentation they said they needed for their public opinion, partly because of the expectations which had been built up (not unreasonably so in view of the bilateral conversations which Andreotti-and Lynch also-had had with Schmidt and Giscard) were quite small from the point of view of the richer countries. It was therefore a narrow schism, unimportant in itself, but with great capacity for damage.
In this rather bad atmosphere we went on to one or two other items. Schmidt judged that we couldn"t at this stage have a proper discussion about our agriculture paper, but then got into it backwards by mistake so we half discussed it but without it being properly presented. Giscard then got very difficult about another item, fastening on to a Danish objection to our scheme for introducing the ecu into agriculture in such a way that it should be neutral from the point of view of the operation of MCAs. He tried to insist on getting in the communique a point that no new permanent MCAs should be created; they should be dismantled very quickly and automatically. We in turn insisted on getting in a balancing sentence about having regard to the agricultural price effects (i.e. this should not be a back-door method of giving a big increase to French farmers) and eventually this was agreed. Giscard, to an extent which was not immediately apparent, was playing for something which could be used later in the Agricultural Council.
Eventually the whole sorry proceedings terminated just before 9.30 p.m. There were little finalspeeches round the table, the Italians and the Irish were sad, the British almost gloating that things had fallen apart, and Giscard singularly maladroit, saying what a splendid symbol the ecu was in French history and announcing that he was going to have some specially minted for presentation to those present, which fell like a damp suet pudding on the already heavy atmosphere. However, without any actual insults being exchanged (it might in some ways have been better if they had been), we wound up.
Schmidt and I then did the press conference. Helmut was manifestly tired but not as depressed as he ought to have been. He tried to get me to answer most of the questions, which I did, and by some miracle did them rather well, so that he said, "I can"t think how you remember the detail so well." whereas I had always thought that the detail of the EMS was exactly what I was weak on. Putting the best face I could on things, I described the result as being "a limited success, successful in that we had got something which could be in place on 1 January, but limited because we were not sure that we had more than six members". I carefully refrained from being more pessimistic than that because I had a slight feeling even then, which was confirmed in one or two talks on the way out, that the Irish and the Italians, though dismayed, might well come round on more mature reflection.
WEDNESDAY, 6 DECEMBER. Brussels.
Into the Berlaymont for the normal Commission meeting which, luckily, had a short agenda which I was able to complete in the morning. Everybody was a bit gloomy, but there was no disposition to quarrel with the general appraisal of limited success", with slightly more stress on "limited" than on "success".
At 6 o"clock there was a ceremony in the Berlaymont for the presentation of the Prix Bentinck to me (mainly, ironically, for my efforts on the EMS). I made a largely impromptu speech, which was a bit sombre. The prize was nice to have as it is quite valuable and has a certain amount of prestige. We dined-for the prize-with the Camu"s at Aalst in a party of about forty, with various notabilities, and speeches after dinner, including a good funny one by Gaston Thorn.
THURSDAY, 7 DECEMBER. Brussels.
Deep gloom had set in by this morning. I had Ortoli for half an hour before lunch. He was also vastly gloomy, thought we had a great Community crisis ahead of us, and said that he hadn"t slept at all during the night. He was agreeable, as he nearly always is, and he made one constructive though minor suggestion that we should have a dinner of the four (in his view) most intelligent Commissioners before we separated for Christmas to try and look at the bleak prospect ahead-the four being him, me, Gundelach and Davignon.
To lunch with COREPER at 1.30, where I gave them a general rundown on what had happened, expressed in fairly mordant terms. Fortunately, this could not last very long because at 3.00 I had to go to the UNICE, i.e. European Employers, Twentieth Anniversary, preside over a panel discussion, and later listen to Schmidt"s surprisingly good semi-impromptu forty-five-minute English speech. I then drove with him to the airport for half an hour"s private talk. I found him more gloomy than on Tuesday night, and inclined to question whether he had done things right -this is an attractive side of him. "I am not sure I arranged it very well, but I don"t see quite how I could have done it otherwise. Ought I to have put stronger pressure on Valery?" "Well, I think a bit," I said. "But it"s very difficult, you know. I don"t think I could have budged him in view of the internal position." "Well, you might have tried harder."
He had a faint gleam of hope that something more might be done for the Italians and the Irish, and was still regretting that the Regional Fund window had been blocked, and suggesting, remarkably unrealistically I thought, that while there was nothing he could do with Giscard, nothing probably anybody could do with Giscard, I might be able to move Barre, who might be able to move Giscard. He urged me to telephone Barre, a suggestion which on reflection I discarded, I think rightly, because (i) no indirect approach to Giscard would have worked; and (ii) my information was that Barre was harder on the Regional Fund than Giscard.
FRIDAY, 8 DECEMBER. Brussels, London and East Hendred.
The Turkish Foreign Minister, okcun, came to rue de Praetere at 9.30. Half an hour"s talk with him. I had met him before and he seems a nice, agreeable man who likes looking at books but is not tremendously on the ball at any rate so far as his country"s economic problems are concerned. He brought a letter from the Prime Minister and required various rea.s.suring remarks from me. London for lunch and doctor. Then to Paddington at 5.00, believing that the new high-speed train which had so impressed me in September would be a good way to escape the rush hour. So it might have been if the wretched thing hadn"t broken down between Slough and Taplow, so that it eventually limped into Didcot at 7.17.
As a result of lunching in a London restaurant, being on this long-delayed train and, presumably, appearing on British television a good deal during the previous week, I had a lot of encounters with semi-strangers who were all very sympathetic, but, it emerged after a moment or two"s conversation, for the wrong reason. They nearly all began, "You must be very disappointed, aren"t you?", to which I would say, "Yes," and they would then say, "A great pity Britain not coming in," so that I realized that they thought this was why I was disappointed, whereas it wasn"t the reason at all, as I had long since reconciled myself to this foolish and typical British decision, a repet.i.tion of the same mistake for the third time in twenty-five years. Why do nations never learn? My disappointment was due to the fact that we appeared to have lost the Irish and Italians and that therefore there was a deep split down the middle of Europe which, with enlargement on the horizon, would undoubtedly mean that we were on a straight road to a two-speed Europe.
SAt.u.r.dAY, 9 DECEMBER. East Hendred.
Left at 11.30 to drive to Warwick University for the honorary degree they were giving me. We arrived for an agreeable lunch with Leslie Scarman, the Chancellor, whom I much like, and a perfectly easy occasion. I made a short impromptu speech after lunch and there was no speech at the ceremony.
MONDAY, 11 DECEMBER. London and Brussels.
A Labour Committee for Europe lunch at the Charing Cross Hotel. 3.35 plane to Brussels. There I saw Calvo Sotelo, the Spanish Minister for Europe. Two points primarily were dealt with. First, I had to tell him how badly the Commission had reacted to the attempt on the part of the Spanish Government to say that they didn"t like our suggestion of an Italian called Papa, who had been our delegate in Ankara, as the head of our Madrid office. Their objection was apparently based on the fact that he had been an active member of the Italian Socialist Party, and they therefore thought he would interfere in Spanish politics. I said that this had not created a good impression at all in view of the extent to which we were firmly saying what a pluralist democracy Spain had become. He took this quite well and said he would consult the Foreign Minister and reflect upon it. The second point was that he stressed to me that it would be a great advantage for Spain if they could have the formal opening of the negotiations by March, and that if this could be achieved they would then be content for nothing much to happen for several months after that.
TUESDAY, 12 DECEMBER. Brussels and Luxembourg.
Excellent news during the morning that the Italian Government had firmly decided to enter the EMS; a considerable retrieval of the previous position.
Avion taxi to Luxembourg, which produced the worst flight which I have had on any occasion in the past two years. We bounced around in the new turbo-prop Conquest, fortunately for only thirty-eight minutes, but it was extremely disagreeable. I was not feeling sick, as Hayden and Laura were, but was mildly frightened, as they were also, and definitely felt rather unsteady when I got out. The pilots obviously thought that it had been fairly rough and apologized profusely, though in fact they had managed a feather landing despite being unable to get the plane straight on a line with the runway as the wind was blowing so hard that they had to go in crab-wise.
A meeting with Emile Noel who told me that Tugendhat"s speech on the budget controversy had gone rather badly, but I didn"t take that too seriously. Then I presented 112 medals to those who had served twenty years or more. I then staggered off to talk to the Political Committee (of the Parliament) about the results of the European Council and to answer a number of questions, some good, some rather foolish.
I then went briefly to a drink at the British Emba.s.sy as I had not been there since the new Amba.s.sador, Patrick Wright, ex-Number 10 Foreign Office Private Secretary,65 had taken over. I liked both the Wrights very much. I had a brief word with Thorn but not to any particular point, and rather more sensible words with various other people about the state of opinion in the Parliament on the budget issue.
WEDNESDAY, 13 DECEMBER. Luxembourg and Washington.
Another day of pouring rain and howling gale. An easy Commission meeting, a short speech to the Parliament, a late quick lunch, an attempted afternoon sleep in the hotel, from which I awoke feeling gloomy and mildly intimidated by the prospect of the evening"s solitary journey,66 and then an avion taxi to Charles de Gaulle at 6.00. Changed to the Concorde and took off at 8.10 for Washington. I worked furiously the whole way, being very behindhand with the American briefs, and was no more impressed with the comfort or food of the nearly full Concorde than I had been coming east eight months before. Worst of all, it was slow, nearly four hours for the trajet. As a result we never quite caught up with the day; we could see it vaguely hovering over the tropics in mid-Atlantic and we could see it disappearing in the west as we came over land between Boston and New York, but it was quite dark when we got on the ground at Washington.
We were met by various protocol people, plus Fernand Spaak, Deane Hinton, Crispin, etc., and drove to the Hay Adams Hotel, where we arrived at 7.15 American time. We talked for an hour or so, and then, with a great act of will, I declined to go out for dinner, let Crispin and Fernand go alone, and went to bed instead. As a result I slept remarkably well until 6 a.m.
THURSDAY, 14 DECEMBER. Washington.
The Hay Adams is a comfortable hotel, subject on this occasion to two remarkable deficiencies, (i) the kitchen had been burned down so that they could produce no breakfast, and (ii) there was one pane missing from the window in my room, which for me was a slight relief as I like fresh air, but would have driven most Americans into a state of insanity as it was fairly cold outside. It was a most beautiful morning. The dawn was golden and the sun came up out of a cloudless sky. I worked until 7.45 and then Crispin and I walked up the road and had a very good breakfast at the Carlton Hotel. Then at 9.15 we went to see Bob Strauss and the inevitable Amba.s.sador Henry Owen in Strauss"s Special Trade Commissioner"s office.
First, Strauss and Owen got me alone and asked me to endorse their handling of a request by Jean-Francois Deniau, the French Minister of Trade, to come to Washington and, as it were, do a bilateral MTN deal on the side, seeing Strauss and the President as well. They had refused this but said that Henry Owen would go to Paris and see Deniau on the following Monday morning.
Were they not right in refusing to let Deniau see the President? (A remarkably undiplomatic question, I must say.) I replied that it was no part of my duty to decide which ministers of member states the President of the United States saw, but that I had no complaint to make about what they had done. I obviously thought the negotiations should be with Haferkamp and his team, though equally I thought it would be foolish to refuse information which might be helpful to the French, and that I therefore welcomed the discussions which they had offered in Paris. The whole issue, on which the Americans are quite capable of reporting my remarks back to the French, was a frightening minefield for causing trouble between us and Paris.
Perhaps with this in mind I used the semi-formal meeting which followed to make the point strongly that the French were not in as isolated a position as the Americans thought; it was quite wrong to think in terms of eight to one, it was much more the shading of a spectrum and that if we didn"t get a better package than was now available, it would not just be the French, it would be several other countries, perhaps the majority, who would be against it. But if we got a good package I thought we could carry everybody along, and this was more important than the date, though the time was ripe for us to try to conclude the negotiations by the end of the year.
On this relatively happy (and, as it turned out, rather too optimistic) note we separated. I had hoped to have forty-five minutes to myself for a little further reflection before seeing the President, but Henry Owen, who can be egregious as well as ubiquitous and inevitable, said that he wanted to come with us, so we took him to the Hay Adams, whose incinerated kitchen was incapable of producing even coffee, before driving across to the White House just before 11.00. We had the usual hold-up at the gate, when the guards looked amazed at any suggestion we were expected, and became very suspicious of Henry Owen when he said he worked there, but eventually let us through, after which with unexpected speed I was in the Oval Office with the President.
He greeted me as warmly as ever, seeming I thought more at ease than on previous occasions. We had about ten minutes together, he, Crispin, Owen and me, before we proceeded to the larger meeting. He was mainly concerned to talk about the Deniau point, and a bit about Guadaloupe,67 and to ask me how Callaghan stood after his defeat in the House of Commons the night before-a few issues of that sort-and to express general friendship and desire to keep very close relations. Then we proceeded to the Cabinet Room and had our across-the-table meeting with a total of about twenty people. He made a speech of welcome, I responded, and then we went into a discussion of issues, MTNs, the European Monetary System (for which he expressed at this stage-differently from Bonn-warm and unqualified approval), followed by our sub-agenda of scientific items.
Towards the end, rather unexpectedly, he enquired about our relations with China, camouflaging it a little by also asking about our relations with Comecon and Yugoslavia. But it was the China answers he was interested in, enquiring exactly what was the "framework agreement", when I was going there, etc., which should have alerted me to the events of the following evening68 more than in fact it did.
Then to the State Department, where we had an early lunch, presided over by Warren Christopher, acting Secretary of State (Vance being in the Middle East). Christopher, whom I had met only once before, is an extremely sensible and nice Californian, who organized the lunch very well. It was a working occasion, with discussion pretty well the whole time, but he did not make me talk too much, so that I was able to eat something, and he orchestrated it well so far as partic.i.p.ants and subjects were concerned, between people on their side like Press, the President"s Scientific Adviser, Cooper of the State Department, and Bergsten of the Treasury.
Disturbing news from Luxembourg that Vredeling (acting President in my absence-it rotates between the vice-presidents) had called an emergency Commission for 11 p.m. to p.r.o.nounce on the budget crisis which had developed between the Parliament and the Council. I doubt if a night meeting under his emotional chairmanship is likely to promote cool reflection.
Our next appointment was with Schultze, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, and we found him depressed though fluent in his always overheated office. He thought that growth in the US economy might well be down to zero and even possibly technically a recession (two quarters of negative growth during the year).
Then Blumenthal, who had Tony Solomon69 with him, and was slightly more optimistic. He was firmly pro-EMS, quite different from his Bonn position. The US Government had at least coordinated itself on this, although there was a slight suspicion in my mind that their firm benevolence was a matter of tactical teeth-gritting rather than spontaneous enthusiasm. This I think was certainly so with Solomon, who fastened on one vulnerable point, about the level at which gold deposits were to be valued, and the general effect of this. Blumenthal, whom I always like, was very willing to admit past errors about the dollar but also anxious to express total confidence for the future, saying the whole position since 1 November was qualitatively different.
On from there, flagging slightly by this time, to the Federal Reserve Board, to meet Miller,70 the Chairman, for the first time. Crispin, who is normally at least as critical as I am, was rather impressed by him. I was not. I thought he produced a fine series of cliches in a not very well-structured conversation, but no doubt this was at least as much my fault as his. The following meeting, at 5 o"clock, was with Larosiere71 and the five or six top officials of the IMF, which he, Larosiere, had asked for and at which they wished to sniff around with reasonably benevolent suspicion at the possible impacts of the EMS on them.
Fernand Spaak"s dinner for me, which was a large and fairly well-chosen affair of thirty-six: the Chief Justice, who looks more and more like Asquith, and who, in spite of his not very liberal reputation, I much like, partly because he talks well about historico/legal matters on both sides of the Atlantic; also a couple of fairly important Congressional figures, as well as a good Georgetown sprinkling-Kay Graham,72 Evangeline Bruce, Alsops, Bradens,73 Brandons,74 etc. It was a good dinner, my only irritation with Spaak-and it is rare for him to cause one-being his placement, in which he decided, saying it was necessary on protocol grounds, despite my expressed scepticism, to give me both the Congressional ladies. I think it was a mistake on any grounds; it would have been much more sensible to give me Kay Graham on one side, who certainly considers herself, as do I, a more important lady. However, the two Congressional ladies were not in fact too bad, although one of them was a religious maniac and the other appeared to be slightly drunk.
FRIDAY, 15 DECEMBER. Washington and New York.
German Emba.s.sy at 9 o"clock, where I was due to brief the amba.s.sadors of the Nine. Despite the diplomatic pre-eminence of Washington, they were not on this occasion a very impressive group, though it was perhaps unfair to judge them as both the Frenchman, Laboulaye, and the German, Von Staden, were away. Peter Jay, who now looks very much the part, certainly has the best appearance. He asked no questions round the table, but was forthcoming afterwards. Of those who spoke, the Dane was the best, and the French subst.i.tute, the commercial attache, the worst. Then to Capitol Hill, where I had a meeting on MTNs with Ullman"s committee. Fortunately we didn"t get into too much technical or controversial detail, but discussed mainly the timetable with general expressions of goodwill.
Then there was an interval before my luncheon at the National Press Club. Fernand Spaak"s other untypical mistake of the week had been to announce at our conversation on the Wednesday evening that the essential rule for a National Press Club speech was to open with an extremely funny story. At that stage I took it calmly, but as the time approached I found it totally impossible to think of any remotely appropriate joke.
In this interval I therefore paced up and down desperately to try and think of something funny to open with. Absolutely nothing came. I arrived in despair. However, the whole occasion gave me the impression from the beginning as being friendly and likely to be helpful. It seemed a much better atmosphere than when I had last been there twelve years before as a young Home Secretary. It was much fuller for one thing, and when I actually got up to speak several entirely impromptu mild jokes of the occasion came to me, so that the first five minutes were a great success and thereafter the speech followed through rather easily. Then a good question period, fast, easy questions, and so off with high morale for the 3 o"clock shuttle to New York. We drove on a beautiful New York afternoon to Marietta Tree"s apartment in Sutton Place.
From 5.15 I went to the Links Club and talked to a dozen bankers a.s.sembled by George Ball. They were all personally agreeable and basically friendly to the EMS. They were certainly a high-powered lot, including the main people from Chase, City Bank, Hanover, Chemical, etc., plus the head of IBM. At 8.00 Marietta had a large dinner party (thirty-four) with a fairly predictable grand New York mixture: Kissingers, Schlesingers, Betty Bacall, Kitty Carlisle,75 Bill Paley,76 Brooke Astor,77 Mrs Agnelli.78 I much enjoyed it.
SAt.u.r.dAY, 16 DECEMBER. New York.
A day off in New York. Took the Brian Urquharts to lunch at the Caravelle, went to the Metropolitan and the Frick in the afternoon, and dined on the West Side with the Irwin Ross"s.
SUNDAY, 17 DECEMBER. New York, Ann Arbor and Brussels.
8.30 plane to Detroit. Drove to Ann Arbor for lunch with the President of the University of Michigan and about forty other people at about 12 o"clock. It was a ghastly luncheon, not a drop to drink at the long reception beforehand-I hadn"t expected anything at lunch-totally inedible food, and speeches, which again I hadn"t expected, after lunch. Then over to the theatre for the commencement and honorary degree ceremony and my address to an audience of about four thousand. To be honest, I don"t think the address went very well: it was a good speech, but too long, thirty-four minutes, and slightly too elaborately prepared, as well as trying to say too much. In any event I always find commencement addresses difficult, and the total absence of alcohol didn"t help either. However, it pa.s.sed off, the ceremony was over and we got away just after 4 o"clock and drove back to Detroit Airport on a sparkling, cold, clear winter afternoon.
La Guardia at 7.30, and the 8.45 Sabena plane from Kennedy to Brussels. Dinner and two hours" sleep before I awoke over Ireland.
MONDAY, 18 DECEMBER. Brussels.
Another special Commission meeting at noon to try and extricate ourselves from any damage which might have been done by Vredeling"s late-night one on Thursday. However, good work had been done over the weekend and it was fairly clear what view we should take on the budget. There had been irregularities in the Parliament"s handling of the matter, but illegality should not be compounded with further illegality, and we should accept as a fact that the budget existed, and was certified as valid by Colombo as President of the Parliament, which was within his const.i.tutional rights. This was our firm view, without any clear dissenters.
I gave lunch to Klaus von Dohnanyi, Sigrist and a third German. Klaus was more or less on time for once and we had an agreeable lunch with rather good talk. I lectured them a little on being pushed around by the French, which I hope they took reasonably well.
TUESDAY, 19 DECEMBER. Brussels.
Foreign Affairs Council with lunch from 10.30 a.m. to 8.15 p.m., which was more than long enough. It was never tremendously productive and pretty boring for much of the time. What was not boring, but not agreeable either, was a 5 o"clock meeting, which I had at my request, with Francois-Poncet. I found him in a highly excitable state about the budget and everything else. He was at least trying to be agreeable most of the time and arguing with himself in some ways more than with me, saying, "No, I am a man of conciliation, I want to seek a solution, a political solution if possible. But if this goes wrong, the possibilities of damage are enormous, the Commission will be in the same position as the Hallstein Commission. We could call off direct elections, it could affect the whole future of the Community."
The French do get into an enormously overexcited state and find it difficult to believe that there can be different interpretations of things and that people who don"t agree with them are not necessarily knaves or fools. They treat people as craven, threaten them too much, and believe that they will succ.u.mb to a "thunderbolts of Zeus" treatment. I think that it stems from the fact that the French Government is too hierarchical and authoritarian, and that they are all terrified if they can"t bring home to Giscard exactly what he wants. This corrupts people like Francois-Poncet, who is in general a decent, sensible, intelligent man. The whole interview left a disagreeable taste in my mouth.
WEDNESDAY, 20 DECEMBER. Brussels.
A morning Commission to 1.35, by which time we had succeeded with a little difficulty in completing all the business. Then a Commission Christmas lunch. Last year they complained that they hadn"t been given enough traditional English food, so this year we organized Christmas puddings with brandy b.u.t.ter, mince pies and, of course, turkey. It was all quite successful, I thought, except the turkey, which was pretty badly cooked, appallingly carved and filled with what was supposed to be chestnut stuffing, but which tasted to me rather like stale liver pate. However, that apart, the occasion wasn"t too bad.
In the afternoon I went to the Greek negotiations from 4.45 to 6.30, which Natali was conducting very well. Then I saw Ba.s.sols, the Spanish Amba.s.sador, who came in to announce (i) that the Spaniards were extremely pleased that we had got them the formal opening of the negotiations on 19 February, and (ii) that on reflection they would be extremely glad to work with Signor Papa as our representative in Madrid-a very typical example of the way in which one can get sensible results from Calvo Sotelo, though he would have done better not to have got into an untenable position to begin with.
Then home to the quadripart.i.te dinner, with Ortoli, Gundelach and Davignon, which flowed from Ortoli"s conversation with me when he was so apprehensive after the European Council. I think the occasion was worthwhile. They all talked well. It was certainly a social success and they stayed a good deal too late, until 12.45. We argued round the problems of relations with the French in particular, including the row, mainly between the French and the Germans, which had broken out over MCAs in the Agriculture Ministers Council. I am not sure that we arrived at any firm view about how to proceed, except that we all thought that the Community faced a fairly critical six months in which the Commission had to steer a difficult and narrow course, but one could no doubt have predicted that without the dinner.
SAt.u.r.dAY, 23 DECEMBER. East Hendred.
I had a fairly excited evening telephone call from Cheysson, he having seen Francois-Poncet for two hours that morning, who was obviously going on trying to fulminate against the Commission, though not to my mind in any way more disturbingly so than he had done the previous week.
SUNDAY, 24 DECEMBER. East Hendred.
To Oxford for an early evening drink in Univ. with Arnold Goodman. He had Ann Fleming and at least two other ladies staying, and we could feel mounting tension on Ann"s part, although Arnold, always apparently blandly indifferent to atmosphere, was dispensing generalized benevolence and rising splendidly above this.
MONDAY, 25 DECEMBER. East Hendred.
Mild and soggy, as usual on Christmas Day. For the first time ever, I think, I played tennis on Christmas afternoon.
THURSDAY, 28 DECEMBER. East Hendred.
Lunch with the Wyatts at Connock. Arnold Weinstocks were also there. I continue to like him much more than I used to. We played croquet on a damp afternoon for too long, well into the twilight. I played with Weinstock, who was absolutely hopeless but, rather interestingly, instead of getting impatient with the game became anxious to go on and on, with a determined but misplaced faith that if he did he would quickly master it.
SAt.u.r.dAY, 30 DECEMBER. East Hendred and Hatley.
Hatley, with snow beginning to fall, at 4.30. Jakie had the Rothschilds to dine, bringing with them Alan Hodgkin, the new Master of Trinity and an exceptionally agreeable man, plus his American wife. I had a long talk with Tess (Rothschild) at dinner, who delivered elaborate apologies and nervous reactions from Victor about whether I was very offended with him for not finally agreeing to join the external review body. The answer is that I was somewhat fed up with his havering but certainly not to an extent of it causing continuing offence.
1978 has undoubtedly been immensely better, despite the setback in December, than 1977, though that perhaps is not saying all that much. For 1979 the prospect looks less good, more like 1977 I suspect, though I hope not as bad.
1979.
Of my four Brussels years, 1979 was the least dominated by one or two clear themes. In the first months of the year the EMS, which had been the leitmotif of 1978, was still waiting to be brought into operation. The French Government forced a delay because it proclaimed itself dissatisfied with the agro-money arrangements by which Monetary Compensatory Amounts could make the rates of exchange at which agricultural products were traded different from those generally prevailing. By early March, however, it allowed this problem, still unsolved, to be moved aside, thereby confirming my feeling that it was more a symptom of a burst of general Elysee morosite towards the Community than a root cause.
This morosite came at an unfortunate time, for it coincided with the French turn to a.s.sume the six-month presidency of the Council of Ministers (and consequently all the other inter-governmental inst.i.tutions in the Community) at the beginning of January. The authority of Council presidencies varies substantially. A new member country can be overawed, a small country overstrained (in its diplomatic resources), and even a big old member country like Germany can suffer from a lack of coordination within its government. France was neither new nor small, and its government, whatever else could be said about it, did not suffer from a lack of coordination. The tradition and the expectation therefore were that France provided the most authoritative presidency of the Nine, good for Europe if the mood in Paris was constructive, extremely b.u.mpy to work with for everybody, but above all for the Commission, if it was not.
The auguries at the beginning of 1979 were not good. At the Brussels European Council in December 1978 Giscard had shown unusually little concern for the susceptibilities of Italy or Ireland, or even of Germany. The French had been further excited by the old nominated Parliament pa.s.sing its last budget in a form which they (and several other governments) regarded as illegal, by Emilio Colombo as President of the Parliament nonetheless certifying it as valid, and by the Commission accepting this as a fact. The imminence of direct elections for the Parliament (due in June) did nothing to a.s.suage these feelings. The French had never been keen on this advance, although loath to block it, and they rightly opined that the new a.s.sembly (they insisted on denying it the name of Parliament) would be more presumptuous in general and more critical of the French agricultural interest in particular.
In addition there was Giscard"s almost ex-officio determination that the Commission should not play too independent a role. De Gaulle had put down Hallstein. He, by contrast, had failed to keep me out of the Summits which were his own creation. But he was certainly not going to encourage the authority of the Commission. This had been a large part of his motivation for launching his idea of a comite des sages or "Three Wise Men". He had got the proposition through the other governments but only in a form which meant that he quickly lost faith in the ability of those nominated to do the job he wanted done, which was to turn the Commission into a strengthened secretariat of a European Council to be presided over by a permanent President. He also, I think, wanted to use the French presidency to curb the independent prestige of the Commission.
He was not wholly alone in this desire. The British were basically with him but, perhaps surprisingly, concentrated more on form, leaving the substance to Paris. The French had no difficulty about according me a guard of honour whenever I went to the Elysee, but objected if I did not speak as the servant of the European Council. The British did not seem to mind what I said, but their Foreign Secretary sent a minute around the Foreign Office (in 1978) instructing his officials to desist from the growing practice of referring to me as "President Jenkins".
The French approach was more serious. It was obvious at the turn of the year that the six months of the French presidency were going to be a test of nerve such as no other presidency had provided. And so it proved to be. It was like living under the constant threat of an artillery bombardment. It was not in fact very damaging when it came, but one never knew when it was going to recommence, and this did not make for a calm life.
Then, at the end of January, there appeared in the sky a totally different cloud, at first no bigger than the proverbial man"s hand and never of much real importance, although it managed to consume a vast amount of time and morale over the next nine months. In late January the Economist published a couple of paragraphs complaining about the extravagance of Haferkamp"s travelling expenses and also pointing a finger at the inappropriateness of Madame van Hoof having accompanied him to China (see pages 31415 supra). There was in addition a side-swipe at Vredeling.
The issue was widely re-reported in the British and continental press, there were questions in the European Parliament and the newly initiated and rather overgunned and underoccupied Court of Auditors (or Cour des Comptes as it was habitually referred to in all languages) was wheeled in to conduct a detailed inquiry into the expenses of all Commissioners. This kept the issue simmering beneath the surface until it erupted again in August and provided another two months of convulsions before finally subsiding because of a combination of boredom and an inadequate supply of scandalous lava.