European Diary, 1977-1981 (21 page)

THURSDAY, 8 SEPTEMBER.
Brussels.

Simonet to lunch. He, as usual, was on good and buoyant form though, less usually, was neither eating nor drinking much. He was gloomy about being able to settle JET because of the obsession of the German Government with its kidnapping problems and his consequent inability to see Schmidt, as well as the failure of the bilateral visit of Callaghan to Schmidt to take place. Full of some good plans for the autumn including, which is of interest and value to us, a seriously focused discussion about the longer-term economic position, which would give me a chance to try and deploy my monetary union ideas at the European Council on 5/6 December.

I asked Simonet why the so-called ‘Rubens Summit', which had been proposed by Giscard in London and set up for Wednesday, 21 September, in Antwerp, had been unexpectedly cancelled. He said because Giscard had gone completely cold on it and when he had gone to see him in Paris had claimed not to be able to remember having heard of it, still less having suggested it. ‘Ah, yes,' he said, ‘an interesting idea, but what purpose would it serve?' Giscard had obviously been very much on this lofty form throughout Simonet's visit. On Giscard's general attitude to him and Belgium, he said: ‘He treated me like a farmer, a quite substantial farmer, who had come to pay the rent and should be allowed to have a sort of annual visit with some conversation, and even refreshment, but not lunch, in the course of doing so.'

FRIDAY, 9 SEPTEMBER.
Brussels.

A serious meeting at 11.45 with Gundelach with whom for more than an hour I went through all our commitments and his agricultural plans for the autumn and winter. He looked greatly revived
by the holiday, and the meeting was both useful and agreeable. He I think was a little oppressed at the fact that I had learnt a good deal about the CAP and the details of his portfolio during the summer. Stevy Davignon to lunch, and I expounded to him my plans for the autumn.

George Thomson came to dine and stay the night. He is sensible and wise about nearly all the issues and had obviously found,
mutatis mutandis,
much the same difficulties in Brussels that I have. In particular he said that, having always previously had very good and easy press relations, he found the Brussels press corps an absolute nightmare. Our only disagreement was that he was cautious and sceptical about the wisdom of my determination to relaunch monetary union.

TUESDAY, 13 SEPTEMBER.
Brussels and Luxembourg.

Left for Luxembourg by car about 7.40. The first perfect autumn morning; mist in the valley of the Meuse at Namur, but brilliant sunshine most of the way. Budget debate all day in the Parliament. After the speech of Eyskens, the Belgian Budget Minister, which was competent and wisely low key, Tugendhat spoke extremely effectively, staking out our strong line of conflict with the Council, and was very well received by the Parliament.

I took Ted Heath, who was paying a visit to prepare for his great Europe lecture at the Conservative Conference, to lunch at a restaurant about four miles out and found him on quite good form, very willing to listen and inform himself, and favourably disposed towards monetary union. Then back for the continuation of the debate. I spoke for about twenty-five minutes, and this again, like Tugendhat's speech, was regarded as effective. Eyskens wound up in a slightly battered but skilful way at the end. I gave a dinner for the Liberal Group.

WEDNESDAY, 14 SEPTEMBER.
Luxembourg and Brussels.

Breakfast with Simonet and Colombo at the curiously Washington-style house of the Belgian Ambassador to Luxembourg. This was exclusively concerned with the boring old issue of the Parliament's new offices in Brussels, a subject in which I am determined to avoid
the Commission getting deeply involved. Back to Brussels by TEE over lunch.

Dined with General Haig and a largish party at Mons. The party was principally for the new US Ambassador to NATO, Tapley Bennett, whose wife I sat next to and found intelligent and agreeable. I was not quite so sure about him. He made a markedly bad speech in reply to the General's almost equally bad one after dinner. It is curious that Americans should be so addicted to these little after-dinner speeches mentioning and welcoming all the guests when they are so bad at it. However, my impression of Haig as being an effective man with a modest manner even if vaulting ambitions, remained unimpaired by the evening.

THURSDAY, 15 SEPTEMBER.
Brussels.

Lunched with COREPER. A slightly awkward issue surfaced: whether the Council presidency (i.e. for the moment the Belgians, next the Danes) should be represented as well as us at the official follow-up talks to the London Summit which Crispin attends for us. There also sadly emerged the certainty that we cannot take JET at the September Council owing to the post-kidnapping paralysis of the German Government. I spoke to Dohnanyi on the telephone in Bonn and got him to promise that the matter would be dealt with at the Belgian ‘Schloss Gymnich'-type meeting in early October, or, at the very latest, at the October Council itself.

Speech in the evening to the British Labour Group in Brussels. It was the sort of semi-informal speech to a Fabian group or a Labour Party dinner or a university Labour Club, which I had done constantly over thirty years, but at which I have got rather out of practice in the last year. I found it highly enjoyable and rather stimulating. It was a pleasure to speak leaning against a table and without a text, rather than to make the much more formal statements with translation, to which I have recently become used.

FRIDAY, 16 SEPTEMBER.
Brussels and La Roche-en -Ardennes.

The day of my ninth and last official introductory visit, but as it was to Belgium not much travel was involved. We began with a Laeken
luncheon with the King and Queen, also the Tindemans', the Simonets, various Court officials, etc. The lunch enjoyable, the King as nice as ever, and the Queen, whom I had hardly previously talked to and between whom and Mme Simonet I sat, was also agreeable: rather good-looking in a sad sort of way, quite interesting, even better English than the King, who goes off into French fairly quickly, which she doesn't.

Then a fairly serious discussion for almost two hours in Tindemans's office which was constructive, except getting rather snarled up at the end on the question of (Council) presidency representation at the Summit follow-up official meeting. Simonet was being rather wild, in favour of rushing at this in an ill-considered manner, and was supported by Van der Meulen, but Tindemans in the middle was a great deal more sensible and balanced, and saw possible consequences far more clearly. Eventually Tindemans got his (and our) way on this.
¹⁸⁵
Finally a reception in the Parliament building given by the Presidents of the two Chambers. Then drove to the Hôtel-Restaurant de l'Air Pur a few miles beyond La Roche-en-Ardennes, for our Commission strategy weekend.

SATURDAY, 17 SEPTEMBER.
La Roche-en-Ardennes.

Morning session on the institutional aspects of enlargement. First, the question of how we would deal with a member state, old or new, in which democracy was overthrown (this issue is clearly made much more actual by the three applicant members, none of whom only five years ago was under any sort of democratic régime). Then there was a good deal of discussion about the size and shape of the Commission itself, most but not all thinking that seventeen would be far too large.

Afternoon session on Mediterranean problems, with particular reference to enlargement. Gundelach very good indeed; Natali not at all bad. After them the discussion began to get all over the place. However, we managed to steer well away from illusions about massive industrialization of the Mediterranean or any commitment
to deal with its agricultural problems by price support. It is vital not to transpose the price support system, with all the excesses which flow from it in northern agriculture, into the Mediterranean.

Very enjoyable dinner talk with Brunner, who can be an extremely engaging conversationalist; he has a remarkable range of knowledge about English politicians, both of the present day and the late nineteenth century. He is much better on such subjects than when dealing with energy. Perhaps I ought to find another portfolio for him.

SUNDAY, 18 SEPTEMBER.
La Roche-en-Ardennes and Brussels.

The morning session was extremely important for me as it would determine whether I could carry the Commission with me on monetary union. Ortoli opened in a slightly worried, defensive mood, because of my having put round my paper on the need for an urgent re-launch of the idea of monetary union; I thought he was more worried than offended, but you can never be quite sure. I then spoke for about twenty minutes, and we had a good discussion which came to a fairly natural end about lunchtime, there being general support, with the exception only I think of Haferkamp, who is by far the most conservative member of the Commission, and of Burke who, for some extraordinary reason, got excited about the difficulty of countries giving up monetary sovereignty, which is an odd view for an Irishman, as of course they have never had it, always being tins on the tail of the Bank of England.
¹⁸⁶
But apart from those two, and Ortoli moving slowly and reluctantly, but moving, there was strong general support for our launching the wider idea and proclaiming the need for an early leap forward. Davignon and Gundelach and, indeed, Brunner and Vredeling were all I thought particularly good in the discussion. So was Tugendhat, as he had been throughout the two days. At the end we all thought we had had a good weekend, and broke up buoyantly with agreeable drinks outside in strong sunshine.

TUESDAY, 20 SEPTEMBER.
Brussels.

Foreign Affairs Council at 10 o'clock. A good discussion on the Spanish application, with the French bewilderingly having decided to withdraw the reservation they were going to put up. However, they were awkward about Commission representation on INFCEP. Guiringaud was not there, but a rather tawdry-looking champagne merchant called Taittinger, who is Under-Secretary at the Quai, put up French objections unsustained by any possible argument. I spoke, I hoped and thought, rather firmly—and this matter ended up by Taittinger saying he would have to get further instructions, which by the afternoon he got and more or less withdrew.

At the ministers' lunch I gave a long
exposé
of what we had done at La Roche, and they seemed quite interested. Then the French rounded off their bad day by coming under powerful gunfire from Gundelach and Cheysson, both of whom spoke extremely well, over our negotiating position in the International Sugar Conference.
¹⁸⁷
They were completely isolated.

WEDNESDAY, 21 SEPTEMBER.
Brussels.

Jennifer went to Bremen to launch a huge ship. Commission meeting all day, adjourning at 6.15. This gave me time to give a little further thought to our 7 o'clock meeting with Bob Strauss, the US Special Trade Representative. The meeting, however, did not demand much thought for Strauss was still at a high level of generality, agreeable as usual, full of bantering conversation, telling us a bit about what was going on in Washington, how anxious he was to make some progress, to produce something he could sell to the public, but showing no desire to get down to any details, or indeed to be awkward, as we thought at this stage he might be.

THURSDAY, 22 SEPTEMBER.
Brussels.

Commission lunch for Strauss and his party, who had been meeting with Haferkamp, Gundelach and Davignon during the morning. Over lunch there was general conversation followed by a brief
exchange of complimentary speeches. Strauss was interesting on a number of points. He had spent most of the night on the telephone to Washington resisting becoming Director of the Budget in succession to Lance, who had just resigned. Who were the important senators? Russell Long (Mississippi) he placed almost at the top of the list. How were the various Cabinet officers doing? Blumenthal not very well, though an able man. Then the draft communiqué was brought in and we worked on this for a short time and got agreement without too much difficulty on the basis of the so-called Swiss formula, with a tacit understanding that we should try and go for tariff cuts of about 40 per cent, minus perhaps 5 per cent, worked out on the basis of this formula–but the understanding not at this stage to be published.

MONDAY, 26 SEPTEMBER.
London.

Dinner at the Annans, with only the Rothschilds
¹⁸⁸
there besides us. An extremely agreeable evening; a great bashing around with Victor, a mixture of literary, political, gossipy conversation.

TUESDAY, 27 SEPTEMBER.
London and Brussels.

At 6.30 I saw Howard,
¹⁸⁹
the new Australian Minister of External Trade, who was perfectly nice but inexperienced. He had clearly been sent by the egregious Fraser with an extremely rough but foolish negotiating brief. It meant that they were trying to go back on the plan we had laboriously agreed to in June for having a general review of trading matters at official level, but
not
ministerial talks and not with a view to the conclusion of a bilateral agreement at this stage. As a result of this he had stubbornly refused the evening before to allow talks to take place between officials on the agreed basis. The object of my meeting was to get him to change his mind on this, which I did, but not without the chilliness and roughness which seems, far more than with any other government, to be involved in dealing with the Australians at the present time.

WEDNESDAY, 28 SEPTEMBER.
Brussels.

Leo Pliatzky, now Permanent Secretary to the Department of Trade, to lunch rue de Praetère. A little preliminary conversation about trade matters, and then a fascinating conversation about the past with him. He had been a close friend, not so much at Oxford as in post-Oxford days, in the late forties and early fifties, but I had seen him hardly at all since I left the Treasury. He had quite a lot of interesting things to say. He was deeply critical of almost everybody within sight, or indeed out of sight: Douglas Allen,
¹⁹⁰
who had lost his cutting edge since he went to the non-job of being head of the Civil Service; Denis Healey, who had certainly been a very bad Chancellor of the Exchequer in the early days and was not all that good now; Joel Barnett,
¹⁹¹
who was ineffective as a Chief Secretary, etc. However, Leo's mixture of prickly charm and angular honesty meant that this did not create a disobliging atmosphere.