Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [454]
M. Chirac had apparently chastised me as a ‘housewife’ in Brussels in June 1987 and was to make an unprintable remark about me in a heated exchange at Brussels in February 1988. But I generally found him somewhat easier to deal with than President Mitterrand, because he said what he thought and because his public actions bore a greater similarity to his privately expressed views. I was, as M. Chirac knew, none too happy about the arrangements which led to the release of French hostages from the Lebanon and which were widely considered to have overstepped the mark as regards the principle of refusal to deal with terrorists. (M. Chirac furiously reproached me at a reception at the Copenhagen Council for allegedly leaking criticism of what the French had done: in fact I could lay my hand on my heart and assure him that we had done no such thing.) To be fair, the French had been of great assistance to us in the matter of intercepting the arms shipment from the Eksund* And of course M. Chirac and I were very much on the same wave-length politically. He had done much to make the Gaullists (the RPR — Rassemblement pour la République) into a modern right-of-centre party, committed to free enterprise. This was of great significance not just to France but in the long term to Europe and the western alliance. I was disappointed, though not very surprised, at the way in which the wily President Mitterrand managed to turn the process of ‘cohabitation’ against the Right. At this time, though, it was the imminence of the French elections rather than their likely outcome which was the problem. For it was clear to me that neither M. Chirac nor President Mitterrand would be anxious to be seen taking tough action on agriculture when French farmers’ votes would soon be needed.
Nor for that matter would Chancellor Kohl whom I saw for tea that afternoon in the German government guesthouse. He confessed to me that he too had had his domestic political difficulties. His farming supporters had stayed away from the polls in two recent Land elections which had led to bad results for the CDU. The small farmer was, he said, a great element of stability in Germany. He said he was prepared to make some sacrifices but it would take four or five years to ‘get over the hill’. I retorted that we did not have four or five years. We must act on agricultural overspending now. But I did not come away from the meeting any more optimistic about the likely outcome of the next Council.
It was too much to expect, when I landed at an icy Copenhagen on Thursday 4 December, that the papers would not be full of allusions to the famous battle of Copenhagen, when Nelson, ignoring signalled orders by the device of holding a telescope to his blind eye, attacked and blew the opposing fleet out of the water. In fact, as at Brussels earlier, it was a magnifying glass — or perhaps a pocket calculator — which were most in order on this occasion, such was the complexity of the matters under discussion. At least we had the amiable Poul Schluter, the Conservative Danish Prime Minister, in the chair. The Danes were anxious to continue receiving as much as possible from the CAP. But of all the other Community countries they were the most anti-federalist. So there was a basic sympathy between us, even if not always a meeting of minds.
Discussions of the ideas put forward at Brussels had been continuing in the Agriculture Council and between officials and the Commission. But since then the pressure had increased to cut back our rebate. The Danes had unhelpfully brought it back into the limelight in their ‘bidding letter’ inviting heads of government to the Council. There was also continuing discussion about what should constitute the Community’s ‘own resources’. But for me