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By Root 2931 0

Christian Democrat Sig. Andreotti, were political rivals but they shared a joint determination to call an Inter-Governmental Conference (IGC). Such a conference, which could be called by a simple majority vote, would be necessary if there were to be changes in the Treaty of Rome, which themselves, however, would have to be agreed by unanimity. An IGC seemed to me unnecessary (as I said) and dangerous (as I thought). Quite what the French and Germans wanted was unclear — beyond their desire for a separate treaty on political co-operation. They certainly wanted more moves towards European ‘integration’ in general and it had to be likely that they would want an IGC if one were attainable as — for reasons I shall explain shortly — it was. It is also possible that some kind of secret agreement had been reached on this before the Council began. Certainly when I had a bilateral meeting with Sig. Craxi early on Friday morning he could not have been more sweetly reasonable; an IGC was indeed mentioned as a possibility, but I made it very clear that I thought that the relevant decisions could largely be taken at the present Council without the postponement inevitable if a full IGC were to be called. I came away thinking how easy it had been to get my points across.

It is worth recalling just how the pressure for an IGC had built up in the first place. A year earlier, in one of those gestures which seem to be of minor significance at the time but adopt a far greater one in the light of events, we had agreed (at Fontainebleau) to set up an ad hoc committee under the chairmanship of the Irish Senator James Dooge to suggest improvements in European co-operation. Some of the committee’s proposals were sensible, such as its stress on more effective political co-operation and a Single Market; some were objectionable like the ‘achievement of a European social area’, which prefigured the approach of the later Social Charter; and some were plainly dotty, such as the promotion of ‘common cultural values’. But above all the Dooge Committee proposed an IGC to ratify all its proposed treaty amendments with a view to the creation of a ‘European Union’. So such a proposal was inevitably on the table at Milan. And once this happened the proposed IGC seemed the perfect vehicle for almost everyone else’s particular ideas about European development. This made it difficult to resist.

It was, in fact, Sig. Craxi himself as President who suggested at the Council that we should have an IGC. Battle lines were quickly drawn. I argued that the Community had demonstrated that it did have the capacity to take decisions under the present arrangements and that we should now at the Milan Council agree upon the measures needed to make progress on the completion of the Common Market internally and political co-operation externally. There would, I granted, be a need for improved methods of decision-taking if these ends were to be met. I proposed that we agree now to greater use of the existing majority voting articles of the Rome Treaty, while requiring any member state which asked for a vote to be deferred to justify its decision publicly. I called for a reduction in the size of the Commission to twelve members. I also circulated a paper suggesting some modest ways in which the European Assembly might be made more effective. I suggested that the Luxemburg European Council, due to meet in December, should as necessary constitute itself as an IGC. There agreements could be signed and conclusions endorsed. But I did not see any case for a special IGC working away at treaty changes in the meantime.

But it was to no avail. Having come to Milan in order to argue for closer co-operation I found myself being bulldozed by a majority which included a highly partisan chairman. I was not alone: Greece and Denmark joined me in opposing an IGC. Geoffrey Howe would have agreed to it. His willingness to compromise reflected partly his temperament, partly the Foreign Office’s déformation professionelle. But it may also have reflected the fact that Britain’s membership of the European