Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [340]
The pressure from most other Community countries, from the European Commission, from the European Assembly and from influential figures in the media for closer European co-operation and integration was so strong as to be almost irresistible. But what kind of integration? My aim had to be to ensure that we were not driven helter-skelter towards European federalism. The thrust of the Community should be towards achieving the genuine Common Market envisaged in the original treaty, a force for free trade not protectionism. To do this I would have to seek alliances with other governments, accept compromises and use language which I did not find attractive. I had to assert persuasively Britain’s European credentials while being prepared to stand out against the majority on issues of real significance to Britain. Such an approach was never going to be easy.
THE MILAN EUROPEAN COUNCIL
I hoped that a significant first step would be the paper which Geoffrey Howe and I worked up for the Milan Council, hosted and chaired by Italy, on Friday 28 and Saturday 29 June. The language and direction of this paper were ostentatiously communautaire. It covered four areas: the completion of the Common Market, strengthened political cooperation, improvements in decision-making and better exploitation of high technology. The most significant element was that dealing with ‘political co-operation’, which in normal English means foreign policy. The aim was closer co-operation between Community member states, which would nonetheless reserve the right of states to go their own way.
At that time there seemed a number of good reasons for this approach. The Falklands War had demonstrated to me how valuable it would be if all Community members were prepared to commit themselves to supporting a single member in difficulties. President Mitterrand had been a staunch ally: but some of the other members of the Community had wavered and the instincts of one or two were downright hostile. Even more important perhaps was the need for western solidarity in dealing with the eastern bloc. Foreign policy co-operation within the European Community would help strengthen the West, as long as good relations with the United States remained paramount. What I did not want to do, however, was to have a new treaty grafted on to the Treaty of Rome. I believed that we could achieve both closer political co-operation — as well as make progress towards a Single Market — without such a treaty; and all my instincts warned me of what federalist fantasies might appear if we opened this Pandora’s box.
I was keen to secure agreement for our approach well before the Milan Council. So when Chancellor Kohl came to see me for an afternoon’s talks at Chequers on Saturday 18 May I showed him the paper on political co-operation and said that we were thinking of tabling it for Milan. I said that what I wanted was something quite separate from the Treaty of Rome, basing co-operation on an intergovernmental agreement. Chancellor Kohl seemed pleased with our approach and in due course I also sent a copy to France. Imagine my surprise, then, when just before I was to go to Milan I learnt that Germany and France had tabled their own paper, almost identical to ours. Such were the consequences of prior consultation.
The ill-feeling this created was, in its way, an extraordinary achievement, given the fact that nearly all of us had come there with a view to proceeding in roughly the same direction. Matters were not helped by the chairmanship of the Italian Prime Minister, Bettino Craxi. Sig. Craxi, a socialist, and his Foreign minister, the