Brussels diary

EU aid to Palestine, Mossad, and another scandal about to break
April 19, 1999

The next scandal

The next big scandal to drench the commission may be coming from the middle east: the Court of Auditors has been getting upset about the use of commission aid to the Palestine Authority. A lavishly-equipped hospital supplied with imported Italian marble tables, and housing which turns out to be so luxurious that Arafat's cronies have moved in-that kind of thing. So far this has not made many headlines, because most of the member states and the commission think it important to keep the EU supportive and closely involved with the peace process.

But things are further complicated by possible connections between some of the commission's sub-contractors for middle east projects and Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service. There seems to be an almost umbilical link between Brussels and Mossad. Ephraim Halevy went to run Mossad, from being Israel's ambassador to the EU. He was succeeded at Mossad by Marechal Levy, who was number two at the Israeli mission in Brussels until two years ago. It does not take a John le Carr? to realise the usefulness to Mossad of being involved, because the EU is funding over half the international aid programme for Palestine.

This shadowy stuff threatened to surface in the investigation of Spanish MEP Juan Manuel Fabra Vall?s into the frauds and mismanagement in the overall Mediterranean aid programmes run by commissioner Manuel Marin. The EU parliament voted for the entire dossier to be turned over to the police-a demand which the commission has signally and repeatedly failed to obey.

Goodbye, Gwyn Morgan

Farewell to Gwyn Morgan, the popular former Labour party apparatchik who first came to Brussels in 1973, running the office of the pioneering British commissioner George Thomson. Morgan has been in Brussels ever since, save for stints as EU ambassador to Turkey, Israel and Canada. A pivotal member of the Welsh "Tafia," one of those tight-knit but informal groupings which help run Brussels, Morgan loves everything Welsh except Roy Jenkins, who fails to take his roots seriously enough.

Morgan's best anecdote-only now can it be told-came from the Harold Wilson years, when Morgan ran Labour's international section. He got a call from former French premier Guy Mollet to say that the comrades across the channel had just elected someone called Fran?ois Mitterrand to lead them. Because Mitterrand was so little known, could the Brits help out by giving him a high-profile welcome to Downing Street, to see a socialist government in action? Morgan laid it all on: lunch with the prime minister, dinner at Transport House with all the trimmings. A grateful Guy Mollet plucked at his sleeve at the departure to thank him. "Very good of you to do all this for this boring Mitterrand chap, particularly since he has no future."

The Chris Patten mystery

Neil Kinnock was on sparkling form at Gwyn Morgan's farewell party, convincing his host (among others) that he was now confident that he would get his dream job of foreign affairs supremo in the next commission. This is interesting, because it means Kinnock has reason to believe that the former Tory party chairman Chris Patten will now not be backed by Tony Blair to be Monsieur PESC, the person charged with running Europe's new common foreign and security policy. Europe would never let two Brits dominate the foreign affairs agenda, par-ticularly after the Tweedledum and Tweedledee performance of Kinnock and Leon Brittan in commission conclaves. Recently, as the commissioners wrestled with their vaunted new code of conduct about declaring their and their spouses' interests, Kinnock and Brittan argued jointly for full disclosure, squeaky-clean rules and the rest of it. A Francophone commissioner asked why "our two Britannic soulmates" insisted on taking the floor when they both say the same thing. The only smiles came when the famously long-winded Kinnock told them: "You will be pleased to hear that I will cut short my remarks just this once because Sir Leon has said it all for me".

Marin or Cresson for the chop?

One figure who pointedly did not turn up to Morgan's farewell was embattled Spanish commissioner Manuel Marin, who is currently shunning events where he might encounter fellow commissioners. "I am abandoned and betrayed. They all want me out of this job by Easter," Marin recently told a confidant. Conventional wisdom in Brussels reckons that if any commission head has to roll in the fraud scandals, the chosen sacrifice is former French prime minister Edith Cresson. Or does Marin, who assured the European parliament that he might be incompetent but he was not a crook, know something that puts him more at risk?

Eternal triangles

Why has Wilfred Martens, Belgium's longest serving prime minister, resigned from his Christian Democrat party's list in the European elections, thus giving up his leadership of the conservative block in Europe's parliament? The answer lies in the eternal triangle. Martens was outraged when his party decided to replace him at the top of its list with a woman, his former mistress Miet Smet, with whom Martens no longer gets on. Why? Martens, 62, has just fathered twins by his new wife Ilse, who used to be Miet Smet's secretary.