Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [457]
On the morning of Tuesday 2 February I had three hours of talks with Chancellor Kohl at No. 10. This was a business-like and quite successful meeting. Both of us had come with detailed proposals on each of the main elements of the package which would be on the table at Brussels. There were still large differences between us on the agricultural guideline and the stabilizers. He was also minded to be more accommodating to the southerners and the Commission over the structural funds than I was. But I was glad to find that he did not press me at all hard on the British rebate. We ended by discussing what the French attitude would really turn out to be. With some prescience (or perhaps knowledge) Chancellor Kohl thought that though it would be very difficult they might prefer a reasonable settlement now to postponement.
I flew into Brussels some time after midnight on Wednesday 10 February after having spoken at a Conservative Party National Union dinner. My first appointment the next day was a breakfast meeting with Mr Lubbers to agree tactics for the Council. In my speech later that day I warned against any temptation to run away from the problem of food surpluses which we all knew had now to be tackled. The battle lines formed much as could have been predicted. The Dutch and we were up against the French and the Danes over the agricultural guideline. The German presidency put forward proposals for the new ‘own resources’ ceiling, which were attacked as too high by the Dutch, the French and us and as too low by everybody else. M. Chirac argued passionately for a higher threshold on cereals before the stabilizer started to work than I and others were prepared to accept. He also tried, as he had threatened in our earlier conversation, to link Britain’s budget rebate with the issue of stabilizers. But it was quickly apparent that this was not going to work. Throughout there was an odd, slightly theatrical air to his performance which was clearly designed to impress a domestic audience. President Mitterrand sat in complete silence throughout these proceedings, restricting himself to a lengthy speech at dinner about future European developments. Not much progress was made that day.
Overnight the Commission came up with a compromise package. But this was rejected by the Germans and the Council broke up for bilateral meetings without any paper as a basis for discussion. Chancellor Kohl was now the key, both as President of the Council and because if the Germans were prepared to do a deal on agricultural spending the French were unlikely to stand out against it. So late that afternoon Ruud Lubbers, Hans van den Broek, Jacques Delors, Geoffrey Howe and I went in to see Chancellor Kohl who was accompanied by Herr Genscher and several other officials. Chancellor Kohl’s style of diplomacy is even more direct than mine. He was never above banging the table and on this occasion he spoke in a parade-ground bellow throughout. He said that Germany was making sacrifices, particularly the German farmers. I replied that British farmers were facing sacrifices too and that I was being asked to accept too large an increase in structural funds and too high a ceiling — 1.3 per cent of GNP — for Community ‘own resources’. The argument went back and forth. M. Delors now proposed a 1.2 per cent ceiling. This prompted alarmed protests from Chancellor Kohl who thought that it might jeopardize his farmers’ set-aside scheme. But I said that I would think further about what had been proposed. I was aware that the Dutch were becoming restive and would probably not be prepared to stand out against what was now on offer. In any case, it was necessary to discuss with my officials precisely what the package would mean and I could only do this in private. What I did insist upon, however,