Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [453]
Who were my allies? However unreliable the French and Germans would be when it came to cutting agricultural spending on which their politically influential farmers depended, I knew that at least I could look to them for support in trying to resist the huge increase in structural funds. I also had in M. Chirac, the Gaullist French Prime Minister, an ally in resisting the large increase proposed in ‘own resources’. But my main allies — though inclined to be critical of our rebate — were the Dutch. Such then was the technically and politically complicated scene which I knew confronted me when I went to Brussels for the European Council meeting on Tuesday 29 and Wednesday 30 June 1987.
It was an intensely hot, humid day when I arrived. On the way from the airport, my car was pelted with water balloons by the less dangerous Euro-fanatics outside the Council. Inside, the possibilities of bad-tempered disagreement were maximized by the weak chairmanship of M. Martens, the Belgian Prime Minister and Council President. He allowed no less than four hours of discussion of the proposed Oils and Fats tax, which the Germans, the Dutch and I had not the slightest intention of accepting.
Generally, I was among the best briefed heads of government on these occasions — partly because I always did my homework and partly because I had a truly superb official team to help me. Perhaps the mainstay of this was David Williamson, who came from the Ministry of Agriculture to the key European policy role in the Cabinet Office and finally — and deservedly — became Secretary-General of the Commission. The intricacies of European Community policy, particularly finance, really test one’s intellectual ability and capacity for clear thinking. With the exception of those of the presidency, the different delegations’ officials were not present during the proceedings themselves; so the Foreign Secretary of the day wrote manuscript notes which were passed out to our people, against which the conclusions recorded by the presidency would be checked.
On this occasion (and at Copenhagen later) the complexity of some of the matters under discussion was absurd. They should have been dealt with by Agriculture or Finance or Foreign ministers: but there never seemed the will to take real decisions at this level and so heads of government would be left discussing matters which would boggle the mind of the City’s top accountants.
The general view was that this first Brussels Council was a ‘failure’ and that I was responsible for it. There was only a little truth in either proposition. It was in any case unreasonable to think that with such a large number of contentious and complicated matters on the agenda agreement would be reached on the first serious attempt. Moreover, a good deal of progress was made on the key questions of finance and agriculture. It was accepted that budget discipline should be ‘binding and effective’, that it should apply to ‘commitments’ (that is basically what the Agriculture ministers agreed to spend) as well as actual payments, and that additional regulations (that is Community ‘laws’) would be adopted to keep the level of spending within the budget. The worst aspect — unacceptable to me — was that they wanted to build into the ‘agricultural guideline’ — that is the total permitted spending on agriculture — the present level of overspending. The package as a whole was not sufficiently tight for me to agree to an increase in ‘own resources’. So the other heads of government left Brussels aware that I had lost none of my willingness to say no.
I met two of the key players in Berlin in September, where I was attending the IDU Conference. I had a working breakfast with M. Chirac at the British Ambassador’s residence. Not for nothing was he known by his compatriots as ‘le bulldozer’: and on more than one occasion I had to make it clear that the lady was not for bulldozing. He was a marked contrast to President Mitterrand.