Peter Hain gets a kicking
It's been a while since there was a good old-fashioned "Britain isolated" story. But the European constitutional convention's debate on foreign policy turned into a sustained kicking for Peter Hain, the representative of the British government. His crime had been to insist, with uncommunitaire bluntness, that the formation of a "European" foreign policy must remain a matter for national governments. Delegate after delegate rose to denounce him and to insist that the "community method" be applied-in other words, a foreign policy run by the commission and decided by majority-vote. So beleaguered was Hain that Gisela Stuart, a Labour MP and the British member of the 12-person praesidium guiding the convention's work, felt obliged to leap to his defence. She decided to address the convention in her native German, "in case you think I'm a little Englander." The gesture went down well-up to a point. A German journalist sitting next to your correspondent whispered, with a smirk, "what a charming Bavarian accent." The British diplomats and Downing Street spies sitting at the back of the convention seemed a little downcast, Roger Liddle from No 10 sank deeper and deeper into his summer suit. (As Prospect's interview p16 makes clear Blair is expecting the convention to come up with the centralised but inter-governmental security policy that can keep Europe in the big power game.) Hain seemed less concerned. The British think the Spanish and the French agree with them-although they were noticeably silent during the convention debate. They are also counting on the convention's chairman, Valery Giscard d'Estaing, to water down anything too extreme that comes out of the convention. There they may get lucky. When Giscard was asked at the closing press conference how he would respond to the overwhelmingly communitaire nature of the speeches, he simply denied that this had been the tenor of the debate.
In any case, the more ambiguous the messages coming out of the convention, the more freedom of manoeuvre there is for Giscard to "interpret" its conclusions. His chief aide in this task will be John Kerr, former head of the Foreign Office, who is running Giscard's secretariat. The two men sit next to each other as part of a panel of five people, on a raised dais above the floor of the convention. But while Giscard largely ignores his vice-chairmen, Giuliano Amato and Jean-Luc Dehaene (former prime ministers of Italy and Belgium respectively), he is constantly whispering asides to Kerr, who laughs affably at his master's quips. If I were a convinced federalist, the sight would make me rather uneasy.
Afraid of German hegemony?
Cock-up or conspiracy? The "no to the euro" campaign's notorious use of Rik Mayall intoning "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein euro" is being widely interpreted in Brussels as a blunder. But it was so obviously provocative, that your diarist cannot help wondering if it wasn't a carefully calculated move from a campaign known to be addicted to focus-group research. It cannot have escaped the anti-euro crowd that the British have some deeply held prejudices about the Germans, which regularly spill over into the European debate. Why not stir up those emotions and then, when challenged, dismiss it as a joke?
Over here, the European Commission could not resist what it saw as an open goal. A spokesman took the trouble of ringing British journalists and suggesting that they ask a question about the ad-providing the perfect opportunity for a "spontaneous" denunciation. Is there a defence for this backward-looking slur on the common currency? How about this: since the foundation of the EU, pro-Europeans have argued that the underlying point of the project is to avoid another European war. The commission's denunciation of the "no" ad made much of the point that the EU was the antithesis of Hitler. Fine. But that is only one reading of history. As we know, many British anti-Europeans harbour deep suspicions that the current drive towards European integration is, in fact, a new attempt to achieve German hegemony by other means. There is an argument to be had: the only dishonesty is to start the debate and then to pretend that you were just joking.
Euro youth isn't what it used to be
Talking of inappropriate references to Nazism, there is something faintly fascistic about the Youth Convention on the future of Europe, which ran in parallel to the grown-ups' convention in July. First, there is the spurious attempt at legitimacy involved in pretending that they represent the views of the young; then there is the distinctly corporatist notion that youth as a category deserves representation. Forget Nazi Germany-the exercise was more reminiscent of one of those East German youth congresses for peace. The youngsters took to the procedures with depressing facility, instantly electing a "praesidium" and slipping into fluent Eurospeak. An exception to this up-and-coming careerism was provided by Brionne Roberts, a young British charity worker. She startled a press conference with a long and emotional statement about how she had left school at 13, been homeless and dropped out of various courses. "I will get a degree, even if I have to wait until I'm 40," she announced. It had little to do with the matters in hand. But the audience responded with a generous round of applause.
