European Diary, 1977-1981 (12 page)

The European Council itself is in form a surprisingly satisfactory body, mainly because it is intimate. There were only twenty-five people in the room and we sat round a relatively small table, looking at most beautiful cartoons on the walls and ceiling. The twenty-five were made up of the nine heads of government, plus their Foreign Ministers, plus Ortoli and me from the Commission, plus four staff from the presidency—British Foreign Office staff, on this occasion, who were there for note-taking purposes—plus one
huissier,
who can be sent out with messages. This was a vast improvement on the huge gatherings which characterize the Council of Ministers, with up to three hundred people present in the huge room, talking from one end of the table to the other as though across an empty football pitch.

We met from 3.30 until 7.30 and talked mainly about the general economic position and then about the North/South dialogue. No
Foreign Minister spoke throughout, nor did Ortoli. I intervened two or three times, fortunately being called by Callaghan to speak second, after den Uyl had spoken first on the general economic prospect, and therefore got into the water fairly quickly and easily. There was little discussion on the Summit issue, because although this was raised with a hint of menace by den Uyl, and supported by all the other five, it was agreed that it should be settled at dinner.

The meetings of the European Council, although intimate and restricted, are not at all secret. There are few in the room, but everybody goes out and tells great numbers of people exactly what they think has happened, and amongst their staffs there are those who in the course of duty immediately go and tell the press. It is a restricted meeting with full subsequent publicity, which is perhaps not a bad formula. At 7.30 I did a short debriefing session with my staff, who cluster around like a group on a rugby field when a player is changing his shorts.

To the Hassler about 7.45 for a very quick change (not of shorts) and then back to the Barberini for the official dinner an hour later. The dining arrangements were rather like those of a feudal court. Dinner, although of the same quality, I think, was provided for everybody, but in a series of rooms of declining hierarchical order. The nine heads of government and I dined in the inner one, then the Foreign Ministers and Ortoli, then the various officials present in a series of about three subsequent rooms. I sat at dinner between Andreotti and Cosgrave,
⁸⁰
the Irish Prime Minister. Cosgrave distinguished himself by eating more than almost any man I have ever seen, although his figure shows less sign than mine of this being his habit. The main course was
pièce de boeuf rôti,
over which I hesitated between taking one or two pieces, and took one, without a second helping. He took four for a first helping and three for a second helping, and followed this by two enormous helpings of ice-cream
gâteau
and then went to sleep for most of the rest of the evening!

Talk at dinner was broadly divided into two halves. Giscard, who was sitting opposite Callaghan, mostly led the conversation down our side of the table, mainly in French with Tindemans
⁸¹
and
Andreotti and me, with Cosgrave concentrating on his food and talking no French at all. Schmidt, Callaghan, den Uyl, Thorn and Jørgensen
⁸²
were mostly talking together at the other end in English. After dinner, I suppose about 10.15, we got down to discussing the dreaded Summit. Den Uyl opened, speaking much worse English than usual for some reason or other. It was late in the evening and perhaps he was getting tired. Indeed at times it was difficult to tell whether he was speaking English or Dutch. Then, after one or two other interventions, Giscard spoke, handling himself rather well but making a highly contradictory statement, explaining why on no possible ground—this being supported by a whole series of specious arguments—could the French Government agree to the Commission being present, and then ending up by saying, which was no doubt what Schmidt had got out of him on the telephone, that he would agree to my being present for a session dealing with matters of Community competence. There was considerable argument around this, and it was made clear that it must be sessions and not a session.

I spoke only once for about five or seven minutes, and others chimed in in varying ways. Schmidt was not very strong, although he claimed to me afterwards that this was his deliberate tactic. He was trying to make it easier for Giscard, he said, having done his real work on the telephone, which was indeed I think true. Callaghan was not very strong either, but not too bad, and on one or two points slightly helped my position. The Little Five plus Italy were disappointing. Andreotti, who suffers grave linguistic disadvantage on these occasions—everyone else spoke in English at this stage of the discussion—said practically nothing. Tindemans was probably the best of the others. Thorn as usual was slightly irrelevant, and then he and Jørgensen left the room for quite a long time, going off I think to look for a loo, which was indeed extremely difficult to find without a walk of about three hundred yards in the Barberini, which was throughout its main disadvantage.

We went on round and round the subject in varying ways, but eventually arrived at the compromise solution, put forward in these terms: ‘Present for discussions within Community competence at session or sessions'. It was made clear that there would be no
question (1) of this being restricted just to one session, or (2) of my being asked to go out of the room at times and wait in the corridor outside.

Towards the end David Owen came in and said that the Foreign Ministers were bored and in a state of revolt outside, could they go to bed? They were told ‘Yes', but in fact when we came out most of them were hanging about having last drinks. I then did a debriefing exercise and the press were informed indirectly of what had taken place. I returned to the Hassler reasonably satisfied. The outcome was certainly better than most people had expected and made it peculiarly difficult to see why Giscard had got himself into such a complicated position and why in particular he had taken the trouble to write me an elaborately drafted letter into which many hours of Elysée or Quai d'Orsay talent had clearly been poured such a short time ago.

SATURDAY, 26 MARCH.
Rome and Brussels.

Up early to another beautiful morning, but in a more relaxed mood than on the previous day. Some work over breakfast, a short briefing meeting, and then to the Barberini for the resumption of the Council at 10.00. Photographs outside on the terrace before we resumed, during which time the Dutch and the Belgians began to get very excited, saying that they were very worried that there had been a long meeting between Callaghan and Giscard that morning and they thought that the French were going to rat, with some degree of British connivance, on the agreement arrived at the night before. They proved to be wrong, but I awaited the acceptance of the agreed statement with some trepidation. But at this stage at any rate such concern proved unnecessary. The Council met from 10.00 until 12.15 and got through a good deal of business fairly expeditiously. Statements were approved on a Common Fund,
⁸³
North/South dialogue, the economic position, the Summit, Japanese trading relations, and we had a somewhat more substantial debate on steel. Callaghan was a good and efficient chairman.

One of the more extraordinary features of the morning was
Genscher's behaviour. As, like other Foreign Ministers, he was not encouraged to speak, he spent the whole of the session engrossed in reading newspapers. He must have read every word in two days' issues of
Die Welt,
as well as getting on to several others. Quite frequently also he read them, not looking down at them on the table in front of him, but holding them up open before him, as though he were sitting at his own breakfast table. His performance reached a crescendo during a longish intervention of Schmidt -when Schmidt was arguing powerfully some point which he clearly regarded as of importance. Genscher was engrossed in his newspaper throughout, and then at a more than usually crucial point in Schmidt's discourse, decided to turn over the page, as a result of which Schmidt was practically enveloped in the folds of the
Frankfurter Algemeine
and was trying to address the Council through newsprint.

Schmidt showed remarkably little irritation at this, but it certainly did not point to very good Schmidt/Genscher relationships, the more so as Genscher, during Schmidt's next intervention, got up and walked heavily and slowly, as is his way, out of the room. However, the Council survived these various vicissitudes and got through fairly satisfactorily. We then hung about for some time, debriefing and preparing for a press conference which I was to give jointly with Callaghan at 1.00. This was a relatively easy and short performance.

While I was sitting in my car in the courtyard of the Barberini waiting to leave, Nanteuil, the French Permanent Representative, approached the car, half-laughing in a slightly embarrassed way. I had my window about a third down and went to unwind it right down, but by some misfortune (it might easily have created a major diplomatic incident) succeeded in winding it bang up in his face. However, he surmounted this and said: ‘I am afraid this is rather a farce, but I have to ask you whether you still want the original of that letter which the President of the Republic wrote to you on Wednesday. It is rather out of date now, so perhaps you don't want it.' I said, ‘Mais, si. C'est un document historique.'

We both laughed a certain amount over this, and I give Nanteuil rather good marks for his handling of the embarrassment. Then, poor man, he had to put his attaché case on the back of the car and try, as is always difficult in such circumstances, to find this heavily embossed document and hand it over to me. Fortified by this, we set off for a celebratory lunch at Passetto until we left to drive at great speed to the airport. We were in the air barely thirty minutes after leaving the restaurant. Why we wanted to get back so early I cannot think, for it was a perfect day in Rome and a horrible evening in Brussels.

TUESDAY, 29 MARCH.
Brussels.

Into the office fairly early, to be photographed beside the Rover, which was in a state of almost total collapse and was about to go back to England for various major overhauls.
⁸⁴
Nonetheless, ironically, British Leyland thought it was a good thing to have me photographed outside the Berlaymont with it. It had to be pushed into position!

FRIDAY, 1 APRIL.
Brussels.

Commission meeting at 10.00 on Mediterranean agriculture. It opened in an extremely disagreeable atmosphere with the French in particular, but also to some extent Davignon and the Italians-Giolitti more than Natali—complaining of the statement (about a new aspect of the old butter exports row) which had been put out in the name of myself and Gundelach. Gundelach gave an explanation which improved things a good deal, and then he went off and did a reasonably satisfactory press conference. But it looked at one time as though we were set right back into the middle of another major row which was going to be quite as difficult as the February one. This did not, however, materialize despite the fact that at the end of the Commission meeting I had Nanteuil muttering dark threats from Paris down the telephone. I did not take these too seriously but I was depressed by the Commission meeting, both because of the disagreeable atmosphere at the beginning and also because of a very unsatisfactory discussion of Mediterranean agriculture.

MONDAY, 4 APRIL.
Brussels.

A meeting with Bob McNamara,
⁸⁵
accompanied by William Clark,
⁸⁶
at 12.30, and took them home to lunch. Apart from Jennifer and Thea Elliott
⁸⁷
(staying), we had a Commission lunch for him, including Ortoli, Davignon and Cheysson. McNamara as always was both nice and impressive. He spoke very well across the table after lunch and made a considerable impression on both Ortoli and Davignon. Cheysson already knew him well.

THURSDAY, 7 APRIL.
London.

Went with Jennifer to see a rather pretty little house in Addison Avenue as a possible alternative to Ladbroke Square. Then to the British Council to look at some good pictures which they were offering to lend me for my room in Brussels. We got a Sutherland, a Matthew Smith, a Sickert and also one or two possible large abstracts.

Then to Downing Street for three-quarters of an hour with Callaghan, who was in what I would describe as his bluff bullying mood. We talked perfectly friendlily for some time. Then I spoke to him about the need to unravel the really very tight knots tied by the breakdown of the Agricultural Council, particularly if Britain wanted JET,
⁸⁸
or indeed if he wanted to have any success during the remaining three months of the British presidency of the Council of Ministers. He then raised without warning some new difficulties about the Summit, on which the French were going on being endlessly tiresome, and suggesting a rather unsatisfactory arrangement by which I did not go to the first dinner, did not go to the Saturday session, and went only to the large Buckingham Palace dinner on Saturday night and to the Sunday sessions. Apparently the French with almost unbelievable impertinence were trying to
say that the British must exclude me from lunch on the Sunday. Callaghan, I thought, was pretty weak in dealing with all this, and it wasn't a very satisfactory conclusion to the interview.

SATURDAY, 9 APRIL.
East Hendred.

Large lunch party with, amongst others, Nicko Henderson. Nicko told me that François-Poncet,
⁸⁹
Secretary-General at the Elysée, had been on to him on either Tuesday or Wednesday about the vital issue of my non-presence at the preliminary dinner for the Summit on the Friday evening, and also the Saturday sessions, Giscard still fighting a hard rearguard action. He also said that throughout the British had been basically just as difficult as the French and that he was amazed that, given this essential weakness of position, I had got as far as I had at Rome.