Keith Middlemas - Orchestrating Europe (Text Only)

During the French Presidency in 1984, President Mitterrand had also made a tour of European capitals with a ‘relaunch of the EC’ in mind. From this came two significant understandings, the first between Germany and France on institutional reform, (even though France still hesitated at the further powers for the European Parliament apparently required by both Germany and Italy), and secondly between Germany and Italy on market liberalization. 41The British government, secured temporarily in the Fontainebleau budget concessions, grew uneasy about suggestions in Paris about an EC of different speeds, if not necessarily a two-tier approach, especially when, addressing the European Parliament on 23 May, Mitterrand presented, with some panache, a view of Europe’s federal destiny and a mordant commentary on how to face le défi Américain – the US challenge.

Much detailed diplomacy was necessary before the Twelve could broker even the beginnings of a compromise, ready for the Milan meeting in October 1984. Mitterrand was now reforging the entente with Germany, hoping that Maurice Faure’s presence as rapporteur of the Dooge Committee (consisting of heads of governments’ personal representatives) would maintain France’s version of how institutions should be reformed during the Irish Presidency. Because of British preoccupations, QMV remained a central issue for the Dooge Committee, whose deliberations were mainly concerned with institutional and constitutional issues. 42But the Committee’s high-level membership, and its reluctance to discuss issues of detailed policy, made it an unsuitable vehicle for inter-governmental competition to set the social and political matrix of the internal market, which may well have influenced Margaret Thatcher to look to Cockfield for a more cautious and and empirical approach. In the end, after sifting the potential impact of various important consequences of the internal market, including the Luxembourg Compromise, the numbers divided seven to three on the key question of QMV.

The Dublin Summit which considered Dooge’s interim report had therefore to fudge the main issue for lack of a consensus; and gave a very nuanced, even contradictory line for Milan. But there was enough acceptance by the majority – which did not in fact exclude Britain – to indicate that the seven to three tally, reaffirmed in relation to the need for Treaty amendments and an IGC (during the March 1985 Council meeting in Luxembourg), could be adjusted. Britain was in the process of modifying its position and making overtures to France about a common front. Geoffrey Howe put an able defence of a British plan for QMV without an IGC, at Stresa, in May. 43But his proposal was pre-empted when Mitterrand and Kohl drew up their ‘Treaty of European Unity’, to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War. What appeared in London to be fresh evidence of the Franco-German entente angered Thatcher and may have contributed to her being manoeuvred into opposition at Milan; she seems not to have been aware until too late that Kohl had also concerted his tactics before the Summit with fellow Christian Democrats in Rome and probably also indirectly with Craxi and the Italian Socialists. 44

The Milan Summit took place after assiduous lobbying by all the minor players. But Italy held the Presidency, and the leaders of the pentapartito, Giulio Andreotti (DC) the foreign minister, and Bettino Craxi (PSI) the prime minister, sought above all to have an IGC in order to ensure that political cooperation and wide-ranging institutional reforms were incorporated. This would have been impossible without amending the Treaties. The Italian proposals were intended to ensure better decision-making, more Commission power of initiative, a Court of First Instance to ease the ECJ’s overload, and larger powers for the Parliament – a substantial part of which went beyond what Kohl and Mitterrand had agreed. After a confused debate, Craxi called for. a vote under the simple majority procedure covered by QMV, and obtained the required and predicted seven to three result: Britain, Denmark and Greece being in the minority.

The British were scarcely surprised at this outcome. Later on, Thatcher argued that her willingness to cooperate had been misconstrued. But for the other heads of government, having an IGC was crucial. At the time, Thatcher accepted that her prior element of acquiescence in QMV (even on the basis that there was no need for an IGC), and the importance for Britain of limiting further progress to no more than the White Paper’s proposals, justified all-out participation once the IGC had been set up by the the majority. (As Howe put it: ‘member states had to be checked from hanging more baubles on a mobile Christmas tree.’) 45But before the IGC opened at Luxembourg on 9 September, the White Paper was already being subsumed in the wider Commission design.

Cockfield had envisaged that his White Paper’s approach to the demolition of three sorts of barriers – frontier, technical and fiscal – should continue to guide the internal market’s evolution, whatever came out at the IGC. Only later would tax harmonization, for example, be incorporated. He had confined it deliberately to the industrial sectors to be liberalized and had not touched on competition, regional policy or the agricultural implications, since he did not intend it to serve as the basis for a more general (and potentially over-ambitious) policy. Nor did he imagine that the internal market would lead directly to EMU (though the Dooge Committee had considered reform of the EC’s monetary system). These dimensions became clear later, for example in his introduction to the Report of the Cecchini Committee, which had been set up to convince member states that the single market would produce not only great but quantifiable benefits. 46

How much was in fact afterwards made to seem contingent on the White Paper can be gauged from Cockfield’s later phraseology 47and the fact that he responded to a question by Cecchini, whether or not to state flatly that the single market required monetary union, by asking him ‘not to overload the boat’ at that stage. 48At the same time, other Directorate officials, looking ahead, were preparing their own complementary proposals in the fields of competition policy, mergers, state aids, and overseas trade.

But while pressing the White Paper on governments prior to the Milan meeting, the Commission Presidency and some member states were also engaged in widening the whole concept to include what they regarded as a more balanced programme, including socio-economic policy, environmental action, institutional reform and political integration (which Delors had already outlined to the European Parliament in January), together with social cohesion in the light of Spain’s and Portugal’s accessions. All this stood in clear contrast to the British interpretation, but in line with the opinions of Laurent Fabius and Elizabeth Guigou, who were in charge in Paris. In October, Delors criticized the British ‘supermarket approach’, and set out his own conception of a ‘real Common Market’ including political solidarity, EMU and cohesion. Here in essence lay the idea of a European developmental state and of an economic space not restricted to the Ten, because these had imagined from the start that it would, in due course, be extended to EFTA countries. 49

It was these proposals which Luxembourg’s Presidency, the next in line, set itself to implement, as an essential adjunct to fulfil the single market according to the contingency formula. Over time, through intricate negotiations in the IGC, Luxembourg’s subtle and neutral approach served to reduce the suspicions of both the Danes and the British. However, the Danish government promised its people a referendum (and Craxi in turn pledged that the Italian parliament would vote only after the European Parliament had given its approval, thereby conveying to the European Parliament a sort of informal competence).