Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [342]
In any case, to my astonishment and anger Sig. Craxi suddenly now called a vote and by a majority the Council resolved to establish an IGC. My time — not just at the Council but all of those days of work which preceded it — had been wasted. I would have to return to the House of Commons and explain why all of the high hopes which had been held of Milan had been dashed. And I had not even had an opportunity while there to go to the opera.
SINGLE MARKET-MINDEDNESS
Annoyed as I was with what had happened, I realized that we must make the best of it. I made it clear that we would take part in the IGC: I saw no merit in the alternative policy — practised for a time in earlier years by France — of the so-called ‘empty chair’. There has to be a major matter of principle at stake to justify any nation’s refusing to take part in Community discussions. That was not the case here: we agreed with the aims of enhanced political co-operation and the Single Market; we disagreed only with the means (i.e., the IGC) to effect them. In general, too, I believed that it was better to argue our case at the earlier stage, either in the Council or in the IGC, rather than in the last ditch, when the proposal had become an amendment to the Treaty of Rome. My calculations here, however, depended upon fair dealing and good faith in discussions between heads of government and with the Commission. As time went on, I had reason to question both.
There now followed an apparently endless stream of meetings and texts in preparation for the European Council which would meet at Luxemburg in December. The reports of some of these discussions, which I read, illustrated how widely differing were the objectives of different participants. M. Delors urged fulfilment of what he had described as the ‘two great dreams’ for Europe — an area without frontiers and monetary union. Every exemption or derogation which other countries, like Britain, sought seemed to be regarded as a kind of betrayal. I was told that at one time or another he had denounced almost every member state except Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands.
The second prize for overambition had to go to the Italians. Sig. Craxi and Sig. Andreotti had come to regard the expansion of the powers of the European Assembly as the touchstone of their federalist principles. They wanted to give the assembly a power of ‘co-decision’ with the Council, something which would have effectively paralysed the Community by subjecting heads of government to perpetual interference by this incohate, inexperienced and frequently irresponsible body.
The smallest European countries were really aiming at the fastest and — for them — cheapest route to European economic and political union and so were likely to go along with any moves in that direction which did not alienate the Germans and the French. It was all summed up in a letter to me from M. Jacques Santer, the Prime Minister of tiny Luxemburg, which would host the Council. He urged that we should ‘recall our great objective of monetary and economic union’, and added: ‘a resolutely ambitious attitude will without doubt allow us to achieve stimulating results and provide a starting point for the economic and psychological changes which are essential as Europe assumes its new role.’ We in the British delegation were inclined to dismiss such rhetoric as cloudy and unrealistic aspirations which had no prospect of being implemented. We were correct in believing them to be lacking in realism; where we were mistaken was in underestimating the determination of some European politicians to put them into effect.
More important to British calculations at the time was what the French and Germans wanted out of it all. By now, the Franco-German axis was again as strong as