Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [346]
Undoubtedly, the main achievement of the British presidency was adoption of or agreement to a record number of measures to implement the Single Market. This was the sort of solid progess the Community needed, rather than flashy publicity-seeking initiatives which came to nothing or just caused bad feeling.
But the London Council itself could only be a modest success. On the way into dinner Chancellor Kohl had made it clear to my private secretary, Charles Powell, that there was no question of Germany being able to take major decisions on agriculture — the most vexed question at this time — before their forthcoming elections. If nothing dramatic could be accomplished on agriculture or the budget, however, the Council was notable for the emergence of M. Delors as a new kind of European Commission President — a major player in the game. I had a brief foretaste of this at the first evening’s dinner, when, to my surprise and unconcealed irritation, he used the discussion period before dinner to launch into a long speech about the parlous financial state in which the Community found itself as a result of the CAP and to put forward a range of quite detailed suggestions. I replied that we should have all been told this before: it was plain from what he said that the Community was broke. I agreed that M. Delors should visit European capitals, as he proposed, to try to find a solution. But this sort of thing ought not to be repeated. I reflected to myself that no one could have imagined a top British civil servant springing surprises on ministers in this way: it illustrated all too well what was wrong with the Commission — that it was composed of a new breed of unaccountable politicians.
As President of the Community I had to give a press conference reporting on the outcome, at which I was accompanied by M. Delors. This time — again to my surprise — he refused to say anything, even when I asked him to comment on one of my answers. I continued to urge him, but to no avail. ‘I had no idea you were the strong silent type,’ I remarked.
M. Delors soon broke his silence. Three days later I gave a speech reporting on the presidency to the European Assembly in Strasbourg on Tuesday 9 December. It could not have been more communautaire. But when I sat down, M. Delors — a quite new M. Delors whom I had never seen or heard before — began to speak. It was Euro-demagogy, designed to play to the prejudices of his audience, to belittle the British presidency and to ask for more money. I was not having this. When he finished I stood up and demanded a right of reply — something quite unknown, apparently, in this ‘Parliament’. Speaking off the cuff, I answered the points which had been raised, as I would in a wind-up speech in the House of Commons. And I did not fail to observe how he had said none of this when he had had the chance at the press conference we had held together. He came in late to the lunch afterwards and took his place beside me. I told him then that time after time I had stood up for his position in the House of Commons, refusing to rule out extra money, even though under the most intense pressure. Of one thing he could be sure, I said: that would never happen again.
In the