by Roy Jenkins
We then boxed around a bit as to what alternative I could offer him, but I took the firm view that so long as he was talking in these terms there was no question of my making him any offer at all. He was threatening to resign; he was threatening all sorts of outside pressure and I thought it would be a great mistake to put forward any proposition even though I had a fairly firm one in my mind. When he had gone I decided I would have to re-summon Haferkamp to try and make sure that he was holding firm, as well as going through with the other interviews which I had lined up.
Giolitti was relatively easy. He was happy with Regional Policy, and the oversight of financial interventions generally. I also saw Vouél, the Luxembourger, and had a brief but I thought satisfactory interview with him, reiterating broadly what I had said to him at Ditchley: that if he wanted to he could keep Competition, but that, particularly as he had indicated to me at Ditchley that he might be slightly bored with Competition, I would also like him to consider the possibilities of Environment, Consumer Affairs etc. on the one hand, or the Budget on the other; but that he always had the fall-back of Competition. This, I learnt subsequently, raised great doubts about the security of his position in Vouël’s suspicious and unsubtle mind.
Another difficult interview that afternoon was with Natali, who as a Christian Democrat and therefore the senior Italian automatically became a Commission Vice-President. Natali is an exceptionally nice man and one of considerable weight and solidity. Communication with him is difficult because his English is non-existent and his French rudimentary, but this is outbalanced by the fact that he is naturally helpful and friendly, with a proper sense of his own position, but this not taking a prickly form. However, the difficulty on this occasion was that I had practically nothing to offer him, except to talk rather vaguely in terms of special responsibilities, of which the main would be Enlargement. He wanted to get hold of Mediterranean agriculture and of Community relations with the countries on all sides of the Mediterranean, propositions which would have been impossible so far both as Gundelach as the Agriculture Commissoner and Cheysson as the Development Aid Commissioner were concerned, as well as being broadly unacceptable outside. So he had to go away with very little on his plate, though I made clear that this was not intended to be a final interview and I hoped to have a more substantial one on the following day. But this clearly left a sizeable loose end.
Davignon also came that evening, but caused no trouble. Despite all the rumours in the press that he would resign if not given External Affairs, he was perfectly happy, as I had known to be the case since Ditchley, to accept the new portfolio of Internal Market and Industrial Affairs. The interview with him was brief and amicable.
Then I re-summoned Haferkamp. The important point here, following on the Brunner interview, was how far he was prepared to hold firm. If he was going to weaken, my position vis-à-vis the German Government could be extremely difficult, and if I was going to be forced back into putting Brunner into External Affairs and finding it difficult to get Haferkamp out of Economic and Monetary Affairs, there were obviously going to be great repercus-sive difficulties about the disposition of other major portfolios affecting Ortoli and Cheysson and Vredeling, as well as the humiliation of having to appear to change under Brunner’s threats.
Haferkamp at this meeting was fairly firm. I do not think I could put it above that. He wanted External Affairs, he thought it right that he should have it, but he was obviously a bit worried as to what the Bonn reaction would be, and I therefore could do little more than stiffen him and tell him we would talk again next morning. This interview did not encourage me, though I was nonetheless quite clear that I ought to hold firm on this major disposition. By this time Emile Noël, the Secretary-General, had been waiting for an hour and a half or so, and I could not do a great deal more than go down and have a scratch dinner with him and Hayden and Crispin and talk over the difficulties and bruises of the day and see what solutions we could find to them.
THURSDAY, 6 JANUARY/FRIDAY, 7 JANUARY. Brussels.
Immediately after my 9.45 arrival at the Berlaymont I had to take Ortoli aside and tell him that I had leaned very much in favour of his being reappointed, while Giscard had at times positively invited me to ask for the reverse to be the case, and that I now needed some help from him. In particular there must be no question of his adding to Directorate-General 2 (Economic and Monetary Affairs), DG15 (Financial Institutions and Taxation), nor I hoped of DG18 (Coal and Steel Funds), and that I also hoped that he would be generous in dealing with the frontier with Giolitti and would arrive at an amicable settlement with him. Ortoli freezes up, not so much in manner as in substance, as soon as anything touching his prerogatives is raised, and he said that he would have to think about these matters and let me know, but implying that it would all be very difficult.
I had several other interviews in the course of the morning: a useful one with Cheysson. There are no problems except marginal frontier ones about his portfolio (Development Aid—Relations with the Third World), although he obviously has some territorial ambitions in the Arab world, and like the clever busy little bee which he is he was very anxious to be consulted and get involved with other dispositions.
I also saw Haferkamp that morning. He was stronger than the previous evening: very firm on the fact that the German package as a whole was perfectly adequate (Brunner to have Energy as well as Science and Research). But I urged him very strongly to make his own soundings in Germany. Brunner was on the telephone the whole time; he (Haferkamp) really ought to talk to people, to Schmidt himself if possible, to Genscher, and also to Brandt, to whom he attached great importance. He left me shortly before lunch saying he would do this.
In the meantime, mixed messages had come in from Ortoli. He was clearly willing to be reasonably accommodating about DG15, totally unwilling to be accommodating about DG18, and inclined to be pretty difficult in dealings with Giolitti, certainly so far as the European Investment Bank was concerned. We then adjourned for lunch in my dining room. Haferkamp came in with the news, just before we started, that he had spoken to Brandt, he had spoken to Vetter (the head of the German trade unions), he had spoken to Wischnewski (Schmidt’s aide and a member of the German Cabinet), who had spoken to Schmidt who was in Spain (I suspect Haferkamp has a slight fear of talking to Schmidt direct himself), and had got very good and positive reactions from them and was therefore totally stiff on External Affairs and was going forward to it with confidence and thought that Brunner would undoubtedly in due course accept Energy, etc. He had not, however, spoken to Genscher, saying, not unreasonably, that he hadn’t done badly in the twenty minutes since he had seen me previously.
After lunch there were the formal proceedings in the Commission room and I did not get back to bilateral interviews until about 5.30 p.m. The exact subsequent series of interviews is difficult to recall. They were in any event supplemented by Crispin’s activities on the Chefs de Cabinet net. I think I saw at least once all the Commissioners except Cheysson and Davignon, whose positions were already fixed without difficulty, most of them twice, and some of them three times. The essential development of events was as follows. First we got news that Brunner had cracked. The German Government declined to intervene, leaving it to be settled in the Commission, and that left him no effective position. Later that evening I firmly offered him Energy, which he already knew was in the wind, and which he accepted.
The Natali position began to sort itself out. He saw me during the early evening and put in a strong bid for a mixed bag of Enlargement, plus Direct Elections, plus the Budget. Crispin, however, did some negotiations with him later in the evening, with the outcome that provided Environment was added to his list he would be prepared to forgo the Budget. The Natali settlement had the effect of unlocking the difficulty into which I was getting with Tugendhat. I had an interview with him before dinner, in which I told him firmly that it was his duty to accept Personnel, which he did not want, but which was important, and, secondly, t
he group of ‘human face’ portfolios. This interview led to a long argument and he went away from it unhappy. But once the Budget had been clawed back from Natali the difficulty became much less because the Budget, DG15 (Financial Institutions) and Personnel made a reasonably satisfactory though rather mixed portfolio for him. I sent for him immediately after dinner, told him this, and made him reasonably satisfied.
It therefore looked by about 10.30 p.m. as though we had a fairly complete solution before us, subject only to the fact that there was very little except a ragbag left for Burke, the Irish Commissioner. I saw him a couple of times in the late evening and offered him Transport plus Consumer Affairs, with a possibility of something else. He was clearly unhappy, but since I am afraid I thought that as he was not very good and as somebody was bound to be the loser (there just are not enough proper jobs for thirteen Commissioners), I did not see that there was a great deal more I could do.
However, between 10.30 p.m. and 1.30 a.m., when we eventually resumed, several other last-minute difficulties came up: a frontier dispute between Ortoli and Giolitti which took more resolving than I had hoped; and long procrastination from Vouël about the exact definition of his portfolio. In addition, Crispin was constantly reporting that Burke was in a black mood, was going round full of gloom and stirring up a certain amount of trouble; I should no doubt have reacted to this more quickly. However, with a list of thirteen portfolios, twelve of which at least had been agreed, I was able to re-summon the Commission at 1.30, to read out the list of twelve, and to get them accepted without undue difficulties, though certain minor frontier disputes were left unresolved. By 2.15 or 2.30 a.m. at the very latest we had all that agreed and were nearly ready to meet the press and announce our decisions. But we then had the great Burke saga, which lasted with a number of adjournments until 5.30 in the morning. He announced himself unable to accept the decision, conducting himself, in very difficult circumstances, with a certain rigid dignity, but also being slow and suspicious. His complaint that he was short of adequate responsibilities had some justification and for that reason attracted some sympathy.
In a series of adjournments we endeavoured to find whether there were some assuagements which we could give him, and several other Commissioners were forthcoming. Natali, Davignon, Tugendhat and Brunner were all persuaded to accept minor incursions to try to help him. I suggested that he should have special responsibility for relations with the Parliament. I had been against devolving this, but it seemed to me a reasonable price to pay to avoid having decisions taken by vote with no unanimity. As a result, after about the third adjournment, all of these taking place within the room, I was able to say that we were offering him a choice between nine different responsibilities. I was not suggesting he should take them all, but he could take any combination of three or four of them, which I thought was a wholly reasonable offer.
At that stage sympathy had swung strongly to the side of the majority position and against him. Nonetheless there was a great reluctance to go to a voted decision. Therefore, at about 4.40, I decided as a last attempt to say that we would have a further and last adjournment and on this occasion we would leave the room. My motive was partly that I wanted a drink; but secondly and more importantly it would get Burke out of the room and give him an opportunity to consult with his cabinet and perhaps escape from the contra mundem mood into which he had fallen. By a great good chance this worked; he came back and said that he would accept Transport, Consumer Affairs, Relations with Parliament, and Taxation. As a result of all this we were able to reach an agreed, unanimous, though painfully arrived at, solution by just before 5.30 in the morning.
Although the process had taken a long time—a somewhat longer time than four years previously when the Ortoli Commission was set up—it was not at all bad by earlier standards. At the beginning of the Malfatti Commission in 1971, the process had been accomplished only after about twenty votes, and at the beginning of the Jean Rey Commission, in 1967, the whole process had taken two weeks—and an extremely wearing and unproductive two weeks it had been.
Appendix 2
Presidents, Ambassadors, Governments
The Presidents of the European Parliament
Georges Spénale (French Socialist) until July 1977, then
Emilio Colombo (Italian Christian Democrat) until July 1979, then
Simone Veil (French Liberal, or UDF, i.e. Giscardian)
The Presidents of the European Court
Hans Kutscher (German) until October 1980, then
Josse Mertens de Wilmars (Belgian)
Ambassadors or Permanent Representatives of the Member States who collectively formed COREPER (Comitédes Représentants Permanents)
Belgium
Josef Van der Meulen until 1979, then Paul Noterdaeme
Denmark
Gunnar Riberholdt
Germany
Ulrich Lebsanft until 1977, then Helmut Sigrist until 1979, then Gisbert Poensgen
France
Le Vicomte Luc de La Barre de Nanteil
Ireland
Brendan Dillon
Italy
Eugenio Plaja until 1980, then Renato Ruggiero
Luxembourg
Jean Dondelinger
Netherlands
Jan Lubbers until 1980, then Charles Rutten
United Kingdom
Sir Donald Maitland until 1979, then Sir Michael Butler
The Other Ambassadors to the Community most frequently dealt with
United States
Deane Hinton until 1979, then Thomas Enders
Spain
Raimundo Bassols y Jacas
Portugal
Antonio de Siquiera Freire
Greece
Stephane Stathatos
Australia
Sir James Plimsoll
India
K.B. Lall until 1977, then P. K. Dave
Japan
Masahiro Nishibori until 1979, then Takaaki Kajawa
China
Huan Hsiang until 1978, then Mao Chao Kang
Canada
Marcel Cadieux until 1979, then Richard M. Tait
Most Western countries had three ambassadors in Brussels: one to the European Community, one to NATO, and one to the Kingdom of Belgium. This may explain occasional apparent confusion.
Governments of the Member States
BELGIUM
Head of state
His Majesty King Baudouin
Prime Minister
Leo Tindemans until October 1978, then Paul Vanden Boeynants until April 1979, then Wilfried Martens
Foreign Minister
Renaat Van Elslande until June 1977, then Henri Simonet until May 1980, then Charles-Ferdinand Nothomb
DENMARK
Head of state
Her Majesty Queen Margrethe
Prime Minister
Anker Jørgensen
Foreign Minister
K. B. Andersen until August 1978, then Henning Christophersen until October 1979, then Kjeld Olesen
FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY
Head of state
Walter Scheel until July 1979, then Karl Carstens
Chancellor
Helmut Schmidt
Foreign Minister
Hans-Dietrich Genscher
Economic Affairs
Hans Friderichs until October 1977, then Graf Otto Lambsdorff
Finance
Hans Apel until February 1978, then Hans Matthöfer
Agriculture
Josef Ertl
FRANCE
Head of state
Valéry Giscard d’Estaing (also head of government)
Prime Minister
Raymond Barre
Foreign Minister
Louis de Guiringaud until November 1978, then Jean François-Poncet
Economics
Raymond Barre until September 1978, then René Monory
Agriculture
Christian Bonnet until March 1977, then Pierre Méhaigne
rie
IRELAND
Head of state
Patrick Hillery
Prime Minister
Liam Cosgrave until June 1977, then
(Taoiseach)
Jack Lynch until December 1979, then Charles Haughey
Foreign Minister
Garret Fitzgerald until June 1977, then Michael O’Kennedy until December 1979, then Brian Lenihan
ITALY
Head of state
Giovanni Leone until June 1978, then Alessandro Pertini
Prime Minister (President of the Council)
Giulio Andreotti until June 1979, then Francesco Cossiga until September 1980, then Arnaldo Forlani
Foreign Minister
Arnaldo Forlani until June 1979, then Franco Malfatti until January 1980, then Attilio Ruffini until April 1980, then Emilio Colombo
Treasury
Gaetano Stammati until March 1978, then Filippo Pandolfi
Agriculture
Giovanni Marcora
LUXEMBOURG
Head of state
HRH Grand Duke Jean
Prime Minister
Gaston Thorn until June 1979, then Pierre Werner
Foreign Minister
Gaston Thorn until November 1980, then Colette Flesch
NETHERLANDS
Head of state
Her Majesty Queen Juliana until she abdicated in April 1980, then Her Majesty Queen Beatrix