Is Prodi sinking?
Jacques Delors, he ain't. Five months after his accession, Romano Prodi is finally coming under critical scrutiny. The first Mediterranean commission president in 25 years was always going to have a long honeymoon. And his fans continue to insist that the softly, softly style is a refreshing contrast to the content-free sound and fury of Santer.
But there comes a point when you begin to wonder whether the deathly silence from the Breydel building is not so much the quiet whirring of Rolls-Royce brains, but rather that familiar ma?ana, ma?ana political philosophy. The pudgy professor from Bologna has endeared himself to his staff with his daily jog and his baritone contributions to the commission Christmas choir. But when it comes to results, the Prodi commission has ways of making you wait.
The Helsinki summit was a setback. His report on new treaty arrangements to accommodate a Europe of 30 sank on launch. So did his proposal that the six priority applicant states should be given firm dates for joining. The Anglo-Italian love affair also seems to have come to a poignant end over the professor's na?ve demand that everything-tax included-should be subject to majority voting. John Humphreys's success on Today in getting fanciful Prodian notions of a European government out of the maestro soured relations further.
All of this seems to underline that the real power shift after the Santer fiasco has been back to the council of ministers and the member states-symbolised, perhaps, by Belgium closing its borders. So is that good news? Up to a point. But if Tony Blair wants to avoid a pre-election Euro-disaster, he should worry less about Bologna baloney and more about the French and Germans falling back in love. The French presidency is next and they have a loaded treaty in their hands.
Sticking up for Blighty
One of the hardiest annuals of the Eurosceptics is this: why is it, that whenever Britain stands up for its interests, this is condemned by other member states as anti-European, while if Germany or France does so, they are merely asserting their legitimate national concerns? Rather like a GCSE essay question, I put this old chestnut to Stephen Wall, the far-sighted, broad-minded and softly spoken British ambassador to the EU. His answers were, of course, diplomatic.
The reasons, he replied, were partly historic-our late arrival as members-and tactical. Our rivals know that charging us with being anti-communautaire is the thing that makes us most nervous, and might thereby crack our resolve. Both true. But what the ambassador did not say is that the group of Britons most sensitive to all this are none other than his foreign office colleagues.
Two recent examples are the withholding tax and the artists' resale right cases. In both, Britain has had a completely logical case but pursued it with such a lack of conviction at official level that our continental colleagues have doubted how far we would really fight for them-when the government did so, everyone was rather taken aback.
Both have seen Downing Street (10 and 11) holding firm while all about them in the civil service have been losing their heads and blaming it on someone else. The truth is that Mrs T was right about one thing-the foreign office (being far-sighted, broad-minded and soft-spoken) represents the interest of foreigners to Britain and not the other way round. In France, if the government is accused of being non-communautaire, they do what all Frenchmen do when lost for words-they shrug.
Thanks for your help, Jean-Louis
If an example of thick-skinnedness is required, you need look no further than Jean-Louis Dewost, the French director-general of the European commission's legal service-the intellectual pinnacle of the Brussels' Parnassus. It was Dewost's department which was responsible for suing Paris for its abuse of community law on British beef imports. Legal technicalities, however, meant that it has taken the commission up to a month to issue a writ which twice (if not three times) had to be revised to ensure it was in order. Meanwhile, Jospin got his retaliation in first by counter-suing the commission for risking the European citizens' health by allowing the beef in. Is Dewost embarrassed by his department's tardiness and incompetence? About as embarrassed as the French government is by its refusal to obey the law.
Bodo's expenses
Bodo Hombach-the Peter Mandelson of the SPD, and one-time Schr?der confidante-always sounded (and looked) like an affable elf from a Tolkien story. But Bodo by name is no Bozo by nature as the usually unembarrassable European commission's expenses department is finding out. According to the German press, the claims which have been winging in from the German diplomat would make Neil Hamilton blush.
Why? Because Bodo is very angry and his expenses claims, consequently, should be seen as more political than pecuniary. Hombach futures took a nose dive after the German voters failed to warm to his Neue Mitte as the Brits had to the third way. There being no equivalent of the Northern Ireland office in Germany, Bodo demanded and got from his old master a splendid sinecure-the job of tinkering with the EU's Balkan's policy-a job, incidentally, for which Paddy Ashdown had pined.
But this was not enough to unruffle his feathers. To establish his high status, Hombach insisted that he be paid as much as a full commissioner. After a lot of embarrassed muttering from personnel, it was agreed to pay up minus a couple of pfennigs.
However, the decision to offer less than full parity has so infuriated him that he is now charging Concorde-scale commuting fees-expenses so large that even the scandal-averse German press can no longer avoid writing about them. The view in Brussels is that if Bodo cannot control his spending powers, he may have to be replaced. Paddy should not throw away his flak jacket yet.
