European Diary, 1977-1981 (45 page)

THURSDAY, 7 SEPTEMBER.
Brussels, Rome and Bussento.

8.40 plane to Rome. Drove to the Eden Hotel where the Italian Government had reserved a suite for us, and worked there from 11.00 until 12.30. Then to the Palazzo Chigi for a meeting with Andreotti and Forlani and three or four other people. Andreotti was
on typical form, looking tired, pasty, unhealthy, but agreeable and on the ball; he hadn't had much holiday, but I don't think he likes holidays; and he was talking in a more clearly focused way than at our last meeting. He is eager on economic grounds, and determined on political grounds, to come into the European Monetary System, but he not unnaturally wants to get as much out of it as possible. The Italians are more specifically demanding than the Irish. The thrust of his demand, to an extent which surprised me, was on changes in the Common Agricultural Policy rather than on the transfer of resources as conventionally defined. The discussion continued over lunch with about four ministers, including Pandolfi,
²⁴
the Minister of the Treasury, whom I had met once or twice before and of whom I think very highly, until about 3 o'clock. There was an informal ‘on the hoof' press and TV conference as we left the Palazzo Chigi.

Hayden, Laura and I left by self-drive hired car, but with police escort, and made good progress south in deteriorating weather. As usual there were heavy downpours around the Bay of Naples. We then drove on down a very crowded and wet motorway until we turned off and began a difficult twenty-six-mile drive over the hills to arrive at Bussento (and the Bonham Carters) at 9.15.

SUNDAY, 10 SEPTEMBER.
Bussento and Rome.

The third very good day of weather. Left after lunch for Naples (a two-and-a-half-hour drive), deposited our car at the Excelsior Hotel and were then rushed through the streets with a quite unnecessary screaming police escort to the Mergellina Station where we caught the
rapido
to Rome. To the Hassler Hotel and to dinner in the roof restaurant, where we were joined, at his urgent request, by Emilio Colombo. Laura feared that he was coming to complain about something—apparently we hadn't replied to some point which he had raised in a letter. But this (as I suspected) could hardly have been less accurate. What he wanted us to do was to provide him with some facts and preferably even a draft speech for the Jean Monnet Lecture at Florence, the successor to mine of the previous year, which he was going to give and which he wanted to be as helpful as possible.

MONDAY, 11 SEPTEMBER.
Rome and Brussels.

Breakfasted on my balcony at 7.45, looking over a slightly misty and autumnal but very warm and sunny Rome: a spectacular view. 9.45 plane. Flew in beautiful weather to about Coblenz and then bumped for twenty minutes into Brussels on as nasty a day as one could easily imagine.

Peter Carrington to lunch. Rather a good talk with him, perhaps because he is a particularly good listener. However, he obviously thinks that if they win in the spring there is a 60–70 per cent chance of his becoming Foreign Secretary. He doesn't totally exclude the Heath possibility but thinks it unlikely; doesn't wholly by any means exclude the John Davies possibility either, but hopes that won't happen. Does clearly exclude the Soames possibility, and is also unenthusiastic about the view which I canvassed to him, which I had previously canvassed to Soames the week before (where it was greeted with more enthusiasm), that Soames might become Minister of Agriculture for eighteen months or so. Carrington says this is because he thinks there couldn't be two ministers -particularly two ministers concerned with Europe—in the Lords. (He may feel a bit that he couldn't control Soames.) However, he was very anxious to discuss what he could most usefully do, as Foreign Secretary in a future government, in the Council of Ministers, etc., and anxious to know how he could make a favourable European impact. At the same time he was not at all confident how effectively he could direct a Conservative Cabinet in such a direction. As always he was gloomy and critical about Mrs Thatcher, and surprisingly pro David Owen.

WEDNESDAY, 13 SEPTEMBER.
Luxembourg and Brussels.

An easy Commission meeting between 9.00 and 10.00, then into the Parliament for Genscher's long-delayed statement on Bremen and Bonn (no previous opportunity); quite well done, not too long. I followed with twelve minutes on the same subject. I then listened to the debate both morning and afternoon, which was almost entirely devoted to the EMS. Sixteen speakers out of nineteen were in favour, and to some considerable extent seized the real issues. It was a great contrast with our December attempt to get
the Parliament to debate it, when they weren't taking it seriously.

I took Christopher Tugendhat to lunch and found him half attracted by the idea of an outside inquiry into the Commission
²⁵
but half worried for his own portfolio responsibilities.

I wound up the Bremen/Bonn debate with an impromptu speech of ten minutes, and then returned to Brussels by avion taxi at 7 o'clock. It was a most beautiful day in Luxembourg, not very warm but absolutely clear sky, extremely low humidity, the first perfect day of autumn. At rue de Praetère I found Robert Marjolin whom I had asked to dine and stay the night. I had a three-hour dinner with him alone. He is an extremely nice man, looks fifty-five and is now nearly sixty-eight, on the board of a number of very high-class companies, Royal Dutch, Chase Manhattan, General Motors, American Express. He is a bit cynical, both about Europe and about French politics, but well worth talking to; I got him on to the subject of what one should do with the Commission and found him favourable to what I had in mind about an outside inquiry. He was willing to make some suggestions about names, but would not undertake it himself. ‘Like you,' he said, ‘I am interested in policy, not in organization.' He first suggested Pierre Dreyfus, ex-head of Renault, as a possible chairman, but then withdrew his name in favour of Witteveen, ex-Managing Director of the IMF.

THURSDAY, 14 SEPTEMBER.
Brussels.

Lunch with Crispin for Calvo Sotelo, the Spanish Minister for European Affairs, and Bassols,
²⁶
their Ambassador; two and a
quarter hours' detailed conversation in French. However, Calvo Sotelo, as I thought in Madrid in April, is a solid, considerable, sensible man with whom to deal. We talked about a wide range of things, including not least the Giscard letter to heads of government and to me, which had arrived the previous day, proposing that ‘Three Wise Men' look at the future of European institutions. I had known this was around for some time, and of course it was all part of the subject he had broached with me in our June talk. However, I regret the exact timing because it coincides with my idea of an outside inquiry into the Commission. However, I don't intend to be put off because of that; his inquiry and mine have different terms of reference, and indeed a different subject.

As I told Calvo Sotelo, I am not too agitated about the letter, although I know some members of the Commission, notably Natali and Davignon—both of whom wanted to issue denunciatory statements—are excited against it. Vredeling, whom I would have expected to be most agitated, is not so. No doubt there is a desire in Giscard's mind to cut down the power of the Commission, to reduce or eliminate our political role, our connection with Parliament, and half to amalgamate us with the Council secretariat and with COREPER, and thus to make us all into servants of the European Council. This must clearly be resisted and some others will no doubt resist the other thought at the back of his mind, which is to revert to the old
Directoire
idea and to reform the Council of Ministers so as, after enlargement, to give greater power to the major countries, particularly France and Germany, maybe Britain. However, I don't believe in taking the rigid defensive view that everything is perfect (it is certainly far from that) and that therefore we should resist any change. I am sure it would be foolish for the Commission to take up this position. Altogether the Giscard initiative requires delicate playing.

I talked also with Calvo Sotelo about his worries that the Greeks might try to veto Spanish entry, or might be put up by the French to do this, and tried to reassure him.

After a long meeting with Davignon, partly about the Giscard letter but mainly to disclose my ideas to him before our Commission strategy weekend, I had an hour with Siad Barre, the President of Somalia, before the small dinner we were giving him in the Berlaymont. He is one of the few Africans who is neither franco
phone nor anglophone, though he speaks both, but Italian better than either. Although a good linguist, he is not a vastly intelligent man, an old Marxist, who has quarrelled bitterly with the Russians in the course of the past year. I had a desultory conversation with him at first, but he got better over dinner. I made a brief three-minute speech of welcome, to which he said that owing to his English not being perfect he was not sure that he could manage an adequate reply, and then produced a spate of more or less coherent words for thirty-two minutes.

FRIDAY, 15 SEPTEMBER.
Brussels and Comblain La Tour.

A meeting with Gundelach, mainly about agriculture but also about the agenda for the weekend, and found him, too, pretty good and firm. Then I saw his new Director-General, Vilain, a Frenchman of course as is regrettably ‘obligatory' in DG6, but was surprised, expecting to see an elegant
Inspecteur de Finance,
to discover a rather young, stolid-looking man who might be a policeman. Gundelach had told me that he seemed rather ‘square' but I wasn't quite sure of his use of the word in English; however it seemed a good description. Vilain seemed agreeable enough to get on with: unable to speak English.

At 12.15 I received Warren Burger, the Chief Justice of the United States. He being the Third Citizen, it was held that I should go down and meet him, which I did, and then had three-quarters of an hour's conversation before taking him in to lunch. Conversation is perhaps not exactly the right word. I thought vaguely of what I might talk to him about, perhaps telling him a little about how Community institutions work, but found this happily totally unnecessary, as he talked the whole time—but well—about Supreme Court affairs. He looked rather like Asquith approaching his dotage but was quite a personality.

At 3.30 I saw Ortoli for the last of my conversations with Commissioners and found him more or less all right, perhaps a little less enthusiastic about reform (of the Commission) than the others, but certainly not proposing to have a row about it. Drove with Jennifer to the Hostellerie Saint Roch at Comblain La Tour in the valley of the Ourthe.

SATURDAY, 16 SEPTEMBER.
Comblain La Tour.

The morning session opened with Tugendhat's paper on budget balance and future resources, a paper of Giolitti's, some contributions from Ortoli, moderately good this first half. Then Gundelach gave a very long but really rather brilliant
exposé
of the agricultural position. We got almost complete agreement on no fundamental upheaval but a very tough anti-surplus price policy, particularly on milk products. Afternoon and early evening sessions on direct elections, the part the Commission should play in them, whether Commissioners should stand, etc., and the organization of the work of the Commission.

SUNDAY, 17 SEPTEMBER.
Comblain La Tour and Brussels.

A final session for three and a half hours, almost exclusively on personnel policy and the outside inquiry. We drove back to Brussels via Villers-le-Temple. A dinner party, rue de Praetère, for Christopher Soames who was staying with us, and Simonets amongst others. Christopher on boisterous form and the evening was easy and agreeable. His arrival caused great excitement in Marie-Jeanne, our excellent but not young Belgian cook, who had worked for him. She not only produced even better food than usual, but had her hair done specially.

MONDAY, 18 SEPTEMBER.
Brussels.

To the Ecofin Council hoping to discover, as we all were, exactly what had happened at the Franco-German meeting at Aachen. The ministers of both countries were reticent. Healey made a fairly effective row about this, but eventually it emerged that nothing too hard had been settled and the slight
morosité
evaporated. The eight (i.e. less Healey) were then prepared to agree upon the Belgian compromise with the parity grid system for intervention, but with the ‘basket', as it were in reserve behind it, providing the basis on which it could be decided who was responsible for an imbalance and who should act to correct it.

WEDNESDAY, 20 SEPTEMBER.
Brussels.

Haferkamp at 7 p.m. to tell him that Tugendhat had referred to me the question of Madame van Hoof's
²⁷
visit to China as one of his party, and that I thought he would be unwise to press ahead with it. However, I said that I would not veto it in the last resort
²⁸
At first he seemed rather inclined to give way but said he would talk about it with her and with Denman (his Director-General). I don't believe he wants her to go but I have little doubt he will be frightened by her into agreeing.

THURSDAY, 21 SEPTEMBER.
Brussels.

Lunch at home for Georges Berthoin, the previous representative of the Community in London and the new Chairman of the European Movement. Berthoin was surprisingly interesting, though slightly disturbing. He is very worried about the Giscard initiative. If they got rid of the political role of the Commission, the overall European interest would go by default, he said. It is essential this should be the starting point, even if national governments subsequently whittle it away somewhat. If it is all left to national governments, nothing will emerge except for a series of horse-trading deals. He is also worried that no government (certainly no major one) is inclined to fight hard for the Commission. He is of course a great defender of the previous system, but still there is a good deal of sense in what he says and he put it very well.