Jour de gloire
Right now it is hard to imagine a time when Euro 2000 will actually be over. But it will not be long before Brussels and all its works sinks back into obscurity-sadly at the very moment that France takes over the EU presidency. Yet signs are that the jour de gloire, 1st July-on the eve of the Rotterdam final-could kick off a very interesting six months. For starters, no-one is buying the old idea that French self-interest is identical with the European project, whatever that means these days. Serious problems are stacking up between now and the Treaty of Nice in December. The Brits are fretting publicly about the social dimension of Lionel Jospin's proposed charter of fundamental rights and the fear that a more flexible approach to flexibility-"reinforced cooperation" in euro-babble-really could mean a two-speed Europe. The Germans, by contrast, are puzzling over whether there is any truth to the notion that their old trans-Rhine romance with France is set to blossom again. For all the carefully-generated passion of the recent Mainz summit between Gerhard Schr?der and the Jacques Chirac/Jospin cohabitees, the noises off have been cool to hostile. Joschka Fischer's "personal" speech about federalism left the French shrugging about tackling the practical problems of EU reform (when not apologising for Jean-Pierre Chevènement's "Nazi" outburst). The trouble is that tackling those practical problems is not necessarily in the French interest because it means reducing national vetoes, cutting the number of commissioners and adjusting voting weights (are 82m Germans really equal to only 59m Frenchmen?)-all vital if paralysis is to avoided when eastern and central European newcomers start joining.
Nigel to the rescue
Le tout Bruxelles may tremble at the prospect of English fans rampaging through the Grand Place, but all over the quartier europ?en, fonctionnaires are braced for the return of Nigel Sheinwald, leaving the Foreign Office's EU directorate in London to replace Stephen Wall as our man at UKRep. Sheiners is worth watching: he worked under John Kerr after Maastricht and won the grudging admiration of diplomatic and lobby hacks during his stint as spokesman for Malcolm Rifkind and then Robin Cook, slipping effortlessly from one to other on 2nd May 1997. (Wonderful thing, Whitehall. It was Stephen Wall, now going to the top EU job in the Cabinet secretariat, who penned John Major's famous "quaint as a rain dance" article in the The Economist mocking the chances of the single currency ever happening.) Sheiners, known in King Charles Street for getting his way, can take the rough with the diplomatic smooth. It was not his fault that ethical Robin's Kashmir, Israeli and arms for Africa problems happened on his watch. Astutely, he became the public voice simultaneously of the FO and Cook, thus avoiding the horrors visited on the Treasury professionals by Charlie Whelan. More recently, as "Mr EU" back at base, he is credited with masterminding the relentlessly multilateral approach that has Tony Blair building alliances with Spain, Italy and Belgium to counter anxieties about being left behind as the euro-train chugs along.
A soldier's Europe
But who dares to say that Britain is not already at the heart of Europe? Hidden away in the Justus Lipsius building, the modernist pile that houses the council of ministers, sits a modest British major-general rejoicing in the name of Graham Messervy-Whiting, now heading the EU's interim military staff committee. Messervy-Whiting knows the highways and byways of the acronym-rich world of Euro-Atlantic defence: Shape, WEU, CJTFS and the like. Supreme commander EU forces is the Spaniard Javier Solana, but he is too nervous about keeping the Americans and Nato happy to trumpet the achievements made so far (an anxiety not shared by French foreign minister Hubert V?drine who observed loftily from the Quai d'Orsay that the United States' role in 20th century European history does not give it the rights of a 16th member of the EU). Yet back at HQ things are going well, if slowly. In a newly-created situation room, bristling with maps and hotlines, military types from all member states now mull over top-level intelligence reports culled from CNN and the FT, pending the day that any member state will agree to share its secrets.
Poor Prodi!
Commission meetings may be dull as ditchwater, as Chris Patten indiscreetly told a leaky Tory dinner in Brussels. But never mind: you can always count on Romano Prodi to liven up them up. Now referred to routinely as "gaffe-prone" or "beleaguered," the genial pr?sident raised a few tight smiles during one recent discussion of disease in Africa and what the commission's ?7 billion aid budget could go do to help combat it. Rambling away, the prof suggested-entirely facetiously-that if wealthy westerners did not understand the terrible burden of debilitating but easily treatable illness, they should all be injected with malaria. Americans call this sort of thing baloney-after the kind of sausage that originally came from Bologna, where Prodi used to teach economics-and many in the capital of Europe fervently wish he still did. n
