Brussels diary

Brussels diary
April 19, 1996

Nothing much gets done in Europe without the thumbs- ups from Helmut Kohl. He's the man with the vision who takes the big decisions at EU summits-like when it's time to break for lunch. That makes him the man to watch at the EU's IGC on its constitutional future, the talk-fest which opens in a refurbished Fiat factory in Turin on 29th March and could last up to 18 months.

Helmut's ambition for the IGC is straightforward enough. He wants to lock his 80m fellow Germans into a united Europe and throw away the key. Of course he loves his countrymen, he just doesn't trust them. He is one of the last surviving members of the war generation, the self-styled son of Konrad Adenauer who regards ever-deeper European integration as an article of faith. No wonder Euro-federasts in Brussels pray every night for his good health.

Rumours that Kohl has a prostrate problem have been circulating for months. But he looks as fit as can be expected for a man closing in on 20 stone. Besides, his appetite for power is undiminished. Remember his one-liner to Wolfgang Sch??uble, his wheelchair bound colleague whom he suspected of plotting to oust him. That's okay, Wolfgang, said Kohl as he breezed into a Cabinet meeting: no need to get up for me.

Now that the Dutch premier Ruud Lubbers has gone, the only leader who dares to stand up to Helmut is Jacques Chirac. The French president did not bother to alert Bonn when he decided to resume nuclear tests in the south Pacific. This time, he failed to reach for "le hot-line" before abolishing conscription.

The worst-kept secret in Bonn and Paris is that the old alliance is struggling to reach agreement on a common IGC agenda. France and Germany are like a pair of ageing lovers who have become slightly bored with one another without having the guts to make a break. John Major would love to make it a threesome-but the most he can expect is a one-night stand in Paris.

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the germans in Brussels are a good deal less visible than Kohl. Martin Bangemann, the long serving, famously lazy industry commissioner, spends much of his time in a boat off Gdansk or at his house in the Loire valley. His favourite mode of travel is private jet. How else does he explain his decision to hire a bumbling press spokesman whose sole qualification is a pilot's licence?

The second German commissioner is Monika Wulf-Mathies, a plodding ex-public sector trade union leader who handles the EU's regional aid budget. Her job is to prepare the ground for a reform of bribes-sorry, structural funds, which must precede the EU's planned enlargement to eastern Europe. The Club Med countries, led by Spain, are desperate to protect their hand-outs. The British, Dutch and Germans are insisting on value for money. Unless she plays her hand carefully, Monika could end up as dead meat in the sandwich.

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the two most powerful German diplomats in town are Dietrich von Kyaw, ambassador to the EU, and J?rgen Trumpf, his predecessor. Trumpf is head of the European council secretariat, the bureaucracy which prepares EU summits. Known as Schtroumpf, Trumpf is a gnome-like figure whose three loves in life are the ancient classics, his Greek wife, and chauffeur-driven cars.

Von Kyaw is a more lively character. Born in a family of Prussian Junkers, he fled East Pomerania aged seven, in a horse-drawn cart. Von Kyaw met his first wife Elizabeth in Hollywood and speaks fluent French and American-English. Behind the swagger lies a sensitive soul with a love-hate relationship with his own country. At times, he dreams of regaining the old pre-war German territories; at others, his worst nightmare is a united Germany slipping its moorings in the centre of Europe. Von Kyaw knows that his job requires compromise-which is why he is known in Bonn not as the st??ndiger Vertreter (permanent representative) but the st??ndiger Verr??ter (permanent traitor).

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if there is a vehicle for German power in Brussels, it's the European parliament. No one takes the parliament more seriously than the Germans. Maybe because they've got more MEPs than anyone else; maybe because they have Klaus H??nsch as president-another refugee from what is now Poland.

H??nsch is pushing for a modest extension of powers for the parliament. He sees it as the democratic counterweight to the decision-taking council of ministers. That's too much for the British and the French. They're not even prepared to give MEPs a seat at the negotiating table in Turin. Like the Bourbons, the French and the British have forgotten nothing and learned nothing. The public rejected the Maastricht treaty because they regarded it as a closed-door elitist enterprise. The parliament has its share of weirdos, but it is the nearest we've got to a pan-European institution representative of public opinion. Lighten up, guys, and let them in. n