Radio
Power struggle
Michael Vestey
In order to become the master the politi- cian poses as the servant. I was reminded of this rather apt observation of General de Gaulle's while listening to The Eurocrats on Radio Four (Saturday), a four-part series examining the arcane workings of the European Commission in Brussels. What a Swiftian hell the EU Kremlin seems, too.
Until fairly recently, we used to regard the President of the Commission as simply the top bureaucrat of the organisation. After all, only a small group of men and women, the Council of Ministers, put him there, he is not the head of state of a coun- try. It seems, though, that we were wrong. Throughout the first two programmes everyone addresses him as President Santer or Mr President as if this overblown Lux- embourger really is on a par with elected leaders. The trouble is — he is.
The smooth, cod-liver-oil voice of Sir Leon Brittan, Britain's senior Commission- er, tells us that when he says, 'I don't think there's anybody outside Britain, frankly, who thinks of the Commission as being other than a political body and it was intended as such if you look at the purpose of it ...' Vivian White wondered if whole new creatures had been created. The answer is, well, yes. As the programmes remind us, the Commission is not just there to implement the wishes of the member states, but to initiate legislation, acquire the approval of the Council of Ministers, and then implement it.
What this means in practice, of course, is that the Commission is a supra-national political body working to achieve ever-clos- er union. Under Jacques Delors it forced the pace and under sinister little Santer it maintains the momentum. Europe is now about a power struggle between a supra- national authority out of control and mem- ber states, some of them still clinging to their remaining but dwindling powers, a point brought home to me during the first programme which concentrated on the beef crisis.
It was clear listening to White interview- ing the Agricultural Commissioner, Franz Fischler, that the beef ban is much more than an argument about the safety of British beef. It is also a demonstration that the Commission is more powerful than any single country. It no longer even pretends that it is just carrying out the wishes of member governments. Fischler was miffed that the British Government hadn't given much warning of the initial statement link- ing BSE to humans. He was called by Dou- glas Hogg half an hour before and informed of its contents.
Fischler was angry about this, thinking a secret was being kept from him. He couldn't understand why he'd been left out. So in the grip of puffed-up supra-nationali- ty is he that he no longer accepts that a country's own elected MPs and electorate have a right to know these matters before he does. Britain is being punished for neglecting to bring Fischler into the British Government. This way, the Commission gradually becomes the government of a European state with everyone having to consult it first.
The real voice of sanity comes, strangely, from a British Conservative Euro-MP, Gra- ham Mather, who tells White, in this week- end's programme, that there is a cosy conspiracy between the Commission and parliament to increase their respective powers. Now that the single market was more or less in place there was no need for a Commission; he would break it up and reverse the drive towards federalism. Peo- ple did not want to see their sovereignty trampled on. There's one moment of unintentional comedy when Neil Kinnock graciously con- cedes that when he addresses the Euro- pean Parliament he sees it as `voluntary accountability'. I imagine he's thinking of his wife Glenys, sitting in the chamber watching him to make sure he's part of the conspiracy Mather referred to.
In these excellent programmes, White and his producers Sheila Cook and BM Frank have managed to get the Commis- sioners and their ludicrous chefs de cabinet and staffs to talk so freely about their roles that they probably didn't realise, drenched as they are in their self-importance, just how much they were revealing. Britain's senior civil servant at the Commission is `Secretary-General' David Williamson who said in his strange, scraping monotone-- like a clock being wound — that they were used to having custard pies thrown at them. I don't think that he and all the others, Brittan, Kinnock, Bonino, Fischler etc., realise just how much hatred there is towards them in Britain and in other parts of Europe.
This is not the fury of the mob but of intelligent, thinking people not normally given to rage. If you fall into that category and are not worried about your blood pres- sure, I cannot recommend these pro- grammes highly enough.
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