On a Wim...
Haughty and Dutch are adjectives rarely seen together, like, say, passionate and Swedish or Scottish and chic. It is a tribute to the towering personality of Wim Duisenberg, president of the European Central Bank, that he has somehow broken the national mould.
A child prodigy in the manner of the Indian sage Krishnamurti and our own Old Testament prophet, Gordon Brown, Duisenberg has never knowingly underestimated his own capabilities. Indeed, the haystack-haired former finance minister is so grandly aloof that many of his senior staff at the Frankfurt bunker have never actually seen him. For that reason alone, the monetary Goliath's battle with a debutante MEP is rapidly becoming one of the European parliament's more amusing soap operas. The boy David, in this case, is Chris Huhne, Liberal Democrat member for southeast England, former economics journalist (and Prospect writer).
Huhne has been harrying the great man about transparency in the ECB's deliberations on interest rates. At first, Duisenberg attempted to bat him off as an irritant. But now the MEP and the parliament's powerful Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee have forced a series of concessions, including the promised publication of the forecasts and econometric models on which interest rate decisions are based.
"Even the executive directors of the IMF-not the most transparent of people themselves-are pressing him," Huhne says, promising to battle on for procedures that are standard at the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England. His goal is the publication of minutes and voting lists.
However, the real cliffhanging Duisenberg story remains the length of his tenure. It stems from the wrangle over his appointment that saw France use a veto threat to demand a slice of the ECB action. Under the final "gentleman's agreement," Wim is supposed to share his eight-year term, handing over to Jean-Claude Trichet, the Bank of France's governor, at the end of 2003. But Big Wim never agreed it, only mere heads of government did. Most believe he would sooner have live television cameras in the ECB's secret deliberations before doing any such thing.
Now yet another compromise is being mooted. With Michel Camdessus expected to step down as Managing Director of the IMF in the wake of the Russian loans fiasco, France, it is said, may be ready to drop its claim for half Duisenberg's term if Trichet is the EU's next IMF nominee. Nice try. But IMF watchers will offer only very long odds on the grounds that this would be three Frenchmen at the IMF in a row. The job is a European rotten borough, but it is not a French rotten borough.
Francophone distress
The French press is still to be found muttering in the basement of the near empty Breydel building about the Anglo-Italian coup d'?tat on their once Francophone institution. So distressed have they become at the Anglicisation of the press room that they recently stormed out of a briefing demanding a summit with the new (British) spin doctor-in-chief, Jonathan Faull. The pretext for the protest was an objection to the "cut-away" shots taken by television cameras, which were deemed to intrude on journalists' privacy. What lies behind the histrionics, however, is the fact that the immensely obscure Europe by Satellite channel is putting out the daily press conference live-a broadcast that can be watched by news editors in Paris.
"How can we go off the record?s if the cameras are there," one grandee complained. Told everything would be on the record, the camera-shy protesters were reduced to bleating: "If you broadcast this to everyone, what is the point of us being here?" Faull was tactful enough not to answer that.
Lib Dems join the beef war
At the very height of the beef war, things were so tense on the Anglo-French front that even Liberal Democrats felt the need to prove their patriotism. Liz Lynne MEP attempted to do her bit for the troops by bringing some prime cuts of Hereford beef through the customs at Strasbourg. Unfortunately, so lax are the border controls that she was unable to find a customs officer on duty. An attempt to give herself up to some idling airport gendarmes met with a Gallic shrug and an order to move on. Even the parliament building appeared to be ranged against her. Later that afternoon, in a very Lib Dem attempt to demonstrate the health and safety dangers of a parliamentary staircase, she promptly fell down it-retiring hurt.
Euro referendum scheming
The Eurostar between London and Brussels is a good vantage point from which to measure the chasm of mutual incomprehension between the capital of Euro-paranoia and the capital of Euro-complacency. The few passengers gathered in the depopulated wastes of first class are often among the few European citizens truly equipped to monitor the oceanic rift between the island and continental political cultures. Often these troubled souls feel the need to talk.
So it was with some delight that I spotted David Hannay making his way to Voiture 6 the other day. As ever, Hannay, a dead ringer for Nigel Hawthorne in Yes Minister but with thrice the gravitas, is in mild despair at the antics of his countrymen, especially the Tories.
Hannay now sits on the Britain in Europe board of directors and strongly endorses the controversial policy of broadening the referendum debate away from the Euro itself. "It will be 'Europe -in or out,'" he said, "just as it was in 1975." A week later-just after the Australian referendum-the wily Labour MEP, Philip Whitehead, explained why. "The status quo always wins a referendum," he said. "The onus of proof is always on the advocates of change to make their case." So you thought it was the Euro-supporters who wanted to change the currency? Not at all, they just want to keep Britain in Europe.
