A Brussels legend
Pierre de Boissieu is a Brussels legend. To some he is the epitome of all that is worst about the Eurocracy-a highly intelligent, secretive, scheming, know-it-all French bureaucrat who has managed to make the transition from being his country's ambassador to the EU, to being the deputy secretary-general (top man, basically) at the council of ministers. At least he is just as hard on his own team as everyone else's. As France's ambassador he was famous for his ill-disguised contempt for some of the pathetic politicians sent from Paris.
When Europe's leaders met a few years ago to decide who should get the plum job at the Council, 13 of the 15 leaders wanted to give it to a Danish candidate-but somehow De Boissieu prevailed. "I'm still wondering how that happened," says a senior Brit in Brussels. (Clue: the two countries that wanted De B were Germany and France.) From his lofty perch at the council, he is now in a perfect position to shape the agenda of the EU-but in a much less visible way than his counterparts at the commission.
Given his rather sinister reputation, meeting the great man can be a bit of a surprise. He is not a snappy dresser-he favours slightly grubby pullovers. He is not particularly stuffy and has a rather teasing sense of humour. But in one respect, De Boissieu does conform to the tradition of the French ?narque. Whereas Sir Humphrey prides himself on being to the point, de Boissieu has a tendency to give long answers, laced with historical references, culminating in blunt assertions that the way forward is "absolument clair," and that anything else is "totalement absurde."
The final contributory factor to the De Boissieu legend is that he is a relative of De Gaulle's. Some say a grand-son; others a nephew by marriage. Unfortunately, there is a real Charles de Gaulle junior-an undisputed grandson-who is also knocking about Brussels. Embarrassingly enough, he is an MEP for the National Front.
De Boissieu has no formal role in the constitutional convention on the future of Europe. He is, however, a rather important string-puller. It was he who recommended to Valery Giscard d'Estaing-the convention's chairman-that John Kerr, a former British ambassador to the EU, should be appointed as the head of Giscard's secretariat. De Boissieu also played a key role in selecting the more junior members of Giscard's team-for example, vetoing a bright young Finnish federalist recommended by the commission. Formally speaking, the secretariat is the least important of the three legs of the convention. The 105-strong convention is meant to produce a constitution; a 12-member praesidium, drawn from the convention, is meant to guide its work, and the secretariat is meant to do the legal drafting and summarising of positions. At the moment, most journalists are anticipating a struggle between the convention as a whole and the praesidium, which is regarded as Giscard's creature. However, as any good bureaucrat can tell you, he who writes the minutes is king. So the real battle may be between an integrationist praesidium and a more Gaullist secretariat which, under the influence of the Kerrs and De Boissieus, could end up as the key force arguing for a constitution that gives more weight to nation states and big countries.
Giscard and the soixante huitard
Giscard already has an unofficial thorn in his flesh from among the ranks of the Brussels press corps. His name is Paul Goossens and he works for Belga-the Belgian press agency. More significantly, he was also the leader of the student revolts in Belgium in 1968. Goossens retains the leather-jacketed, wild-haired, chain-smoking appearance of the true soixante-huitard. Giscard and Goossens got off on the wrong footing, when Giscard's press people arranged an informal press briefing for a few important journalists (Le Monde, the FT, that sort of thing) and Goossens got wind of it and decided to gatecrash -appearing at the door and denouncing the closed, elitist nature of the gathering. Had it been anyone else, the assembled officials would probably have told him to piss off and called security. But fearing trouble, they ushered Goossens in. Then, when Giscard staged his first big press conference after the opening of the conventions, who should pop up with the first question but our Flemish friend. Actually, it was not so much a question as a denunciation of Giscard for leaking parts of his speech in advance to Le Monde-an action denounced as undemocratic, elitist, untransparent and so on.
Poland's Potemkin farmer
Stanislaw Lempicki must now be the most famous Polish farmer in the world, thanks to a recent trip to Poland for Brussels correspondents. In an effort to get across their argument that Polish agriculture is seriously threatened by the EU's miserly attitude, the Poles rushed their important guests around an array of farms in eastern Poland. But Lempicki-a grizzled and emotional old man, with a tragic past, 13 cows and "peasant" stamped all over him-proved irresistible to the hacks. He appeared in the very first paragraph of subsequent articles run by The Times, The Economist, Reuters, Le Monde and Le Figaro (the latter two on the same day) the Suddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Allegemeine and Handelsblatt. Lempicki may be a dairy farmer, but he clearly also has a certain way with sheep.
