European Diary, 1977-1981 Part 8

We then bounded through a number of other items more or less satisfactorily, and the whole thing ended about 1.15, after which I did a large press conference with Tindemans, who had been a successful chairman. The Council had not been inspiring, but there had been quite a good atmosphere, some considerable success in settling practical disputes, and a fair if not tremendously enthusiastic wind behind our monetary union proposals. I think that my tactic of not having a great row with Ortoli and not presenting the European Council with too hard a choice at this stage has been correct, although much criticized.

WEDNESDAY, 7 DECEMBER. Brussels.

Commission, followed by a Socialist lunch at the Pare-Savoy, which is almost my least favourite of the grand Brussels restaurants and an extraordinarily lavish place to be chosen by the Federation of European Socialist Parties. They had disinterred old Sicco Mansholt217 to preside and had about five or six others, Fellermaier, Prescott, etc. The object was to launch a considerable attack on the Socialist Commissioners, but particularly upon me, for not being more political in the worst sense of the word, i.e. that we didn't run the Commission on a more party-political basis, that we didn't have more purely party votes, that we didn't devote ourselves enough to doing down the dirty Christian Democrats, Liberals, etc.

It was really all pretty good nonsense, particularly coming from Mansholt whom I like personally but who is a tremendous old att.i.tudinizer. I forbore from asking him what particular Socialist policies he had introduced during his many years in the Commission, except for building up the worst excesses of the CAP during his period as Agricultural Commissioner. But, this apart, I replied with some vigourprovoked the more by the fact that Cheysson had made a ridiculous intervention slavishly agreeing with them. (When have you ever split from Ortoli on an issue touching French national interests, I asked him.) Vredeling, Vouel and Giolitti, however, were a great deal more helpful and reasonable. Having denounced the nonsense of what our a.s.sembled hosts had been proposing, I left in something of a hurry but with some satisfaction, feeling that the lunch hadn't done any harm, apart from being digestively too elaborate.

THURSDAY, 8 DECEMBER. Brussels, Bonn and Brussels.

A special Commission meeting from 9.45 to 1.30 to deal both with Mediterranean agriculture and the general CAP price proposals for 1978. It was a remarkably productive morning in which we got through the whole of the substantial Mediterranean agriculture proposals and settled the main price issues. There was a curiously evenly balanced division on this and had I organized against Gundelach I could undoubtedly have got a 1 per cent as opposed to a 2 per cent increase through. However, this might have been counterproductive. There would be no point in sending him into the Agricultural Council with a figure which he regarded as unrealistic.

To Bonn by car for my dinner with and speech to the German Inst.i.tute for Foreign Affairs. As with nearly everything in Bonn it was in the familiar Konigshof Hotel. Agreeable company, with Birrenbach218 on one side and Weizsacher,219 whom I always greatly like talking to, on the other. An audience of 350, which filled the ballroom, and a talk by me for very nearly an hour on EMU as seen after the European Council, with an attempted reply, particularly in the crucial German context, to the post-Florence criticism; and then a half-hour of quite tough but useful questioning. One or two, Ehmke notably, were sceptical, but the general atmosphere not at all so. Back to Brussels by midnight.

FRIDAY, 9 DECEMBER. Antwerp and Brussels.

Antwerp at noon for my official visit to the docks and the city. A short ceremony at the Stadthuis and the presentation of two rather nice Rubens reproduction etchings, a short speech before getting on to a motor launch where we had an elaborate lunch during a long tour of the docks until 3.45. Bonham Carters arrived to stay for the weekend.

SAt.u.r.dAY, 10 DECEMBER. Brussels.

Left at 12 o'clock for Bruges. We missed the turning off the motorway for some reason and found ourselves half-way between Bruges and Ostend and therefore went on and drove round Ostend which I had not been to since I was aged six. A rather striking Gare Maritime and, even in the pouring rain, quite an attractive pet.i.t port and seaside town. Back to Bruges for lunch and the normal walking tour of Bruges, the ca.n.a.l banks, the Memling house, etc. A dinner party that evening with Tines and others. It went on much too late mainly owing to Jacques Tine seeming so pleased at getting away from his NATO diplomatic colleagues that he stayed until 1.30.

MONDAY, 12 DECEMBER. Brussels.

Lunch for Constancio and the other members of the Portuguese negotiating team, mainly a return for their welcome to us in Lisbon and also an expression of our appreciation of the quality of Constancio, his frankness, competence, and the work his team had done. He gave us a realistic appraisal of the Portuguese position following Soares's defeat. He also made it pretty clear that they were going to settle with the IMF.

Denis Howell220 for a drink for an hour and was glad to have Birmingham and political gossip with him. He was splendidly critical of nearly everybody in the British Cabinet and I found him friendly and enjoyable, not at that stage knowing how truculent he had been in the Environment Council that day.

Dinner at the Chateau de Val d.u.c.h.esse for the first time this autumn, which may be why the autumn has been relatively agreeable. This was with the Agriculture-Ministersnever having been to an Agricultural Council I thought that this was rather a good way of seeing them. I sat between Mehaignerie, the French minister, and Dalsager, the Dane, with Humblet, the Belgian President, opposite, with Gundelach on one side of him and Gibbons, a caricature of an Irish face, but very nice, on his other side. Light-hearted speeches (by agricultural standards at any rate) afterwards.

TUESDAY, 13 DECEMBER. Brussels and Strasbourg.

7.19 TEE to Strasbourg. Agreeable journey apart from a yodelling and dancing waiter who leapt about and shouted in what he thought was a highly dramatic way as we breakfasted without a hint of dawn through the Foret de Soignes. Three hours' solid work before Strasbourgmuch better than going by air if it is possible. Lunch for Colombo, President of the Parliament. Then by far the best question time I have had. The grouping of questions at last began to work, so that I had a whole hour to myself. I got through only three or four questions, with endless supplementaries, but at least I was able to develop a certain swing and pattern.

Then the last of my political dinners for the group which calls itself 'Communist and Allies', the 'Allies' being mainly a curious Trotskyite Dane, who was looked at rather askance by the others for he was dressed like an amateur revolutionary, and two Italians, the irrepressible Spinelli221 and a woman journalist from Milan, who was on one side of me. Ansart,222 the princ.i.p.al Frenchman there, was on the other. They were all very anxious to be pleasant. I had a good talk with Ansart about French Socialist/Communist history in the twenties and thirties, the Congress of Tours, etc.; he was surprised I knew anything about it.

WEDNESDAY, 14 DECEMBER. Strasbourg.

Early Commission before the Parliament sitting, at which Simonet began with a report on the European Council. I followed for fifteen minutes, and then listened to the debate before leaving for a lunch at the Hotel de Ville which Pflimlin, the last Fourth Republic Prime Minister and Mayor of Strasbourg for twenty years, had surprisingly and agreeably decided at short notice to give in my honour. Attractive eighteenth-century Mairie; short informal speeches afterwards.

THURSDAY, 15 DECEMBER. Brussels.

Addressed the Economic and Social Committee as a beating-up-of-support exercise for EMU. Back to the Berlaymont for a particularly useless COREPER lunch; the amba.s.sadors were at their worst. I think Nanteuil is the best, awkward although he can be.

Australian Amba.s.sador (Plimsoll) at 3.30, who was obviously anxious to remove the acerbities which Fraser had created in our relations. American Amba.s.sador (Hinton) at 4.15 who, in his usual ponderous but well-informed way, wanted a preliminary run over the subjects for the Carter visit on 6 January.

FRIDAY, 16 DECEMBER. Brussels.

A large (and for once mixed) luncheon party in the Berlaymont for the j.a.panese. This had started as an occasion for Nishibori, the Amba.s.sador, to thank him for the help he had given on the Tokyo visit; but it coincided with the visit of Ushiba223 (new trade negotiator) which we had pressed for very strongly following immediately on his Washington visit so we somewhat changed its nature. Ushiba I thought nice and able, a little exhausted after his Washington trip.

Unfortunately the lunch was almost completely inedible: the worst meal which I have ever known served in the Commission dining room. There was an indifferent fish course and then a veal chop, which seemed to be an attempt by Davignon to dispose of some of his surplus steel products. n.o.body could get their teeth into it. How much the j.a.panese noticed I don't know; perhaps they merely thought that if we intended to be nasty we could be very nasty indeed.

SAt.u.r.dAY, 17 DECEMBER. Brussels.

Drove with Charles224 and Jennifer in brilliant sunshine down the familiar autoroute over the Meuse at Namur to lunch at the Val Joli at Celles. Afterwards a walk to see the old marooned, swastikaed tank marking the furthest point of the German advance westwards in the Battle of the Bulge on Christmas Eve thirty-three years ago. Whether Rundstedt went to the Val Joli for reveillon I do not know; but his elan had fortunately died away by Christmas Day.

MONDAY, 19 DECEMBER. Brussels.

The beginning of the last week of this long, fifteen-week autumn term. Jennifer left to try to go to London at about 9.30, but after spending the whole day at the airport, with a mixture of fog in Brussels and fog in London, came back and then went by the night ferry. Yet another special Commission meeting to tie up still further the ends of the Davignon steel and textile proposals.225 Foreign Affairs Council at 3.00. We dealt quite well with a few internal items, and then the question of the Greeks, who had turned up in Brussels again. Papaligouras226 made a fairly discontented statement, though in my view with some justification, about the state of the negotiations. Then, after a fairly wearing five hours in the Council, we had to go to a dinner which the Greeks were giving in the Carlton Restaurant. I sat next to Papaligouras and listened to various complaints from him, which I am on the whole disposed to take quite seriously in spite of his state of advanced neurasthenia. During the course of the meal, at which he ate practically nothing and drank nothing either, he must have lit and put out between twenty and thirty cigarettes, and his whole manner was totally in line with this. Back to the Charlemagne at 11 o'clock for another two hours in the Council on steel, which Stevy (Davignon) handled very well.

TUESDAY, 20 DECEMBER. Brussels.

A continuous meeting of the Foreign Affairs Council from 10.00 to 5.30. A mixed day: first we disposed of the textile issue quite satisfactorily, the British withdrawing their opposition to the Commission proposals. Then we got the Germans to say that they would accept the 32 million units of account (for steel) ad referendum to their Cabinet, but with a strong implication that this would be all right.

Then into a discussion on the Regional Fund; this was far from all right. The Germans and the French were determined to get the Commission committed to the figure of 1850 million units of account, which had been proposed by Giscard and agreed at the European Council. There wasn't any real issue of substance, for we had no intention of challenging this by putting forward different figures in our preliminary draft budgets. But equally we strongly took the view that as an independent inst.i.tution we could not just say, 'Yes, yes,' to any last-minute decision of the European Council and give our acquiescence in the minutes of the Council without even a Commission meeting considering this seriously. Such an acceptance might indeed place us in considerable embarra.s.sment vis-a-vis the Parliament, and also considerably limit our ability to play a mediatory role, which we had on the whole done very well during the early part of December, between the Council and the Parliament, in the event of a future dispute.

The Germans and the French, although united in wanting some commitment from us, had, as is typically the case, rather different motives. The Germans were concerned with the money; they didn't want to be under further pressure to provide more, and they wanted to have guarantees that we would not put them into a corner over this again. The French position was much more theoretical and const.i.tutional; they wanted us, being present at the European Council, to accept ourselves as being bound by its decision, on the ground that any challenge of it-most of all from the Commission-would be almost lese-majeste towards Giscard.

We had about two hours' rather difficult argument before eventually-after an adjournment-we arrived at a formula which was slightly softer and more acceptable from our point of view than the one I had offered half an hour before. The Council accepted 1850 million units of account as its programme for three years; the Commission 'took note' and said that it would 'act in consequence', which was precise enough in my view to be committing in practice, but imprecise enough to raise no great questions of principle.

It emerged during the adjournment that the Germans would accept anything that the French would accept; it emerged also that the French very typically had spent the adjournment going round muttering that if we persisted in being difficult not only would a very bad view be taken in Paris, but the whole question of our future partic.i.p.ation in European Councils would be raised. The French are always great ones for using dark threats of this sort, and it was also typical that when the issue was over, Dohnanyi, who had been leading for the Germans, was extremely agreeable and said it was all very satisfactory and he totally understood my position, whereas Deniau, ex-member of the Commission though he is, went on looking dark and said that he thought the issue might have done great damage in Paris. Deniau is an able, vain, difficult man; Nanteuil had also been flapping round a great deal during the interval, but he, unlike Deniau, was worried and anxious to be helpful.

To the far end of the Avenue Franklin Roosevelt for my dinner of well-deserved thanks to Simonet for his presidency of the Council. Home under a great moon and a hard frost.

WEDNESDAY, 21 DECEMBER. Brussels and London.

Commission from 10.10 to 1.25 without any great difficulty. Then a festive Commission lunch to which all but two came. There were complaints from Cheysson and Davignon that there was no Christmas pudding, which was a pity as I had thought of having it but decided that it would be regarded as too heavy and too English.

Commission again until 4.30, when we satisfactorily rounded up the business with a normal exchange of compliments between myself and Ortoli on behalf of the others. Very well and warmly done by Ortoli, as indeed had been the case at the end of the summer. Ten minutes' drinks for my immediate staff, and the 6.25 plane to London. More or less on time for once. Then to the Savoy Hotel where I gave dinner for Edwin Plowden's now slightly ageing but still very powerful group of businessmen, who had entertained me so often since 1968. Apart from Plowden himself, there were Orr of Unilever, Poc.o.c.k of Sh.e.l.l, Geddes of Dunlop, Wright of ICI, Partridge, former Chairman of the CBI and former head of Imperial Tobacco. A good discussion on EMU at the end. They were all in favour of it but totally sceptical as to whether it would be possible for the politicians ever to do anything so imaginative.

There was also an interesting discussion about the political situation: broadly they were satisfied with the Government's performance over the past year and equally apprehensive for the future under either a Thatcher Government or a Callaghan Government or any other Labour Government with a large majority; a typical view I think of a large and influential sector of British opinion. I was also struck by the extent to which the prospect of continuing and rising unemployment over the next decade was oppressing all their minds and striking them very sensibly as being the central economic problem.

The new flat at Kensington Park Gardens being only semi-habitable with builders in, I spent the night in the Savoy, the first time I had stayed in a London hotel since I had stayed in the same hotel nearly thirty-three years before, after our wedding in the Savoy chapel. Then we had the diversion of several V2s falling quite near.

FRIDAY, 23 DECEMBER. East Hendred.

Soggy, incredibly warm morning; temperature 59, one of the warmest December days on record. Horrible weather, in my view. No remote possibility of frost or snow; there unfortunately seems now to be a regular pattern, a cold Advent, followed by ten days of nondescript weather with no winter quality over Christmas.

SAt.u.r.dAY, 24 DECEMBER. East Hendred.

Oxford for an hour's not very effective shopping, then lunch with Arnold Goodman at Univ. Michael Astors,227 Stuart Hampshire,228 Jennie Lee and Hilde Himmelweit229 (whom I had put on the Annan Committee on Broadcasting but never met before); the two last ladies staying with Arnold for Christmas.

WEDNESDAY, 28 DECEMBER. East Hendred.

Luncheon party of Bradleys,230 Rodgers' and Gilmours. Bradleys on particularly good form, Tom being extremely funny; also the Gilmours, Ian very easy and agreeable. I am not sure how happy Bill is, although full of hope, almost of complacency, for the future.

FRIDAY, 30 DECEMBER. East Hendred.

To lunch at the Wyatts'231 at Connock, forty miles away. Clarissa Avon,232 Weinstocks233 and John Harris at lunch, the Weinstocks and Clarissa all being surprisingly agreeable. I used not to like Arnold Weinstock but I have greatly come round to him and now find him thoroughly interesting, partly I think because he listens better. Netta Weinstock has always been a nice woman. Clarissa Eden out to be pleasant to a really quite remarkable extent. Woodrow I thought a little subdued.

SAt.u.r.dAY, 31 DECEMBER. East Hendred and Hatley.

Drove with Jennifer to stay with Jakie (Astor).234 Arrived at Hatley for lunch, croquet from 3.00 to 4.00, then the Rothschilds to dinner just before 8 o'clock. Quiet New Year's Eve, although Victor in some ways on obstreperous form, but very typically insisting on leaving at about seven minutes to twelve, thereby avoiding any midnight celebrations. Although he complains about it a good deal, he seems rather fascinated with the minutiae of the gambling Royal Commission, and I therefore feel less guilty about having pressed him into chairing it.

It has been an extraordinary year and in some ways a great strain, both on Jennifer and me. Looking back, it is now almost impossible to imagine the atmosphere of oppressive strangeness in the first days of January. Certainly my mood for the greater part of the year was such that I would not have made the decision to go to Brussels had I been able to see things in advance. The job is more difficult to get hold of and less rewarding than I thought. Also in many ways I am not particularly well suited to doing it, lacking patience, perhaps at times resilience, certainly linguistic facility which, while not essential, would be a considerable a.s.set (this notwithstanding the fact that my French has improved a lot during the year). The number of opportunities to make a persuasive impact is also smaller than in domestic politics. The Parliament, although I have got increasingly to feel at home there as the year has gone by, does not compare as a sounding board with the House of Commons, and the opportunity to do effective television appearances on a multinational scale is much less than on a national scale in the United Kingdom.

On the other hand I think I am able to run the Commission itself, as opposed to the Berlaymont, reasonably well. The contacts with Parliament, with other bodies like the Economic and Social Committee, and the outside speeches and lectures go reasonably well, as do on balance the contacts with the heads of government. I find the most difficult gathering to be the large, inflated, sprawling Council of Foreign Affairs. I considerably prefer, despite the fact that there is always a lot of strain a.s.sociated with them, the much more restricted meetings of the European Council, and greatly prefer the informal Foreign Affairs Ministers' meetings of the 'Schloss Gym-nich' type, particularly under Simonet's chairmanship. What I think have gone really well have been the contacts outside the Community, relations with the Americans in particular, although the j.a.panese trip also seemed to come within this category; also with the Portuguese and the Spaniards.

The year has been sharply divided into two parts, with the first seven months being on the whole dismal. Since 5 September, the date of the return from the holidays, although there have been setbacks, my sense of direction (provided by EMU) and morale have improved greatly.

1978.

1978 was the year of the creation of the European Monetary System, and as a result the best of my four in Brussels. The trigger was the fall of the dollar. In October 1977, the month of my Florence speech, a dollar bought 2.30 D-marks. By February 1978 its value was down to DM 2.02 (it went further down to DM 1.76 by that autumn). By the standards of 1987 this was not a precipitate decline. But in the late seventies, when the era of dollar omnipotence was only a decade behind, it seemed like a collapse of the verities. It produced considerable inconvenience as well as compet.i.tive disadvantage for Europe. It also confirmed Helmut Schmidt's view that President Carter was abdicating from the leadership of the West. And the German Chancellor was less inhibited about filling the monetary than the political gap, and even better qualified to do so.

On 28 February, at what I expected to be a fairly routine meeting with him in Bonn, he electrified me by announcing his conversion to a major scheme of European monetary integration. What he proposed was well short of full monetary union. But it went about 30 per cent of the way down the ambitious road which I had charted at Florence. It was a wonderful 'turn-up for the book', a sharp contrast with the att.i.tude of mildly benevolent scepticism which he had taken at the Brussels European Council only three months earlier, and a transformation of the Community landscape. Germany was the one country which could make a reality of monetary advance.

Schmidt normally coordinated his European moves with Giscard. But in the late winter of 1978 the French President was preoccupied with his legislative elections, the first round of which was due on 12 March. He was widely expected to lose his majority and find the second half of his presidency as hobbled as President Mitterrand's was between 1985 and 1988. This did not happen, but its prospect affected events both by making Schmidt's initiative dependent on the left not winning in France (hardly a signal example of Socialist solidarity) and by making Giscard remote from the very early formative stages of the EMS.

Schmidt therefore used me as his main non-German confidant (and on 28 February he said that he had only two or three German ones) to a greater extent than he might have done if 'my friend Valery' had been more secure and available. The question of confidentiality was a teasing factor throughout the incubation of the EMS. Schmidt was a naturally indiscreet head of government. But this did not mean that he liked other people betraying his confidences before-and sometimes even after-he had done so himself.

I am not sure that I was instinctively any more discreet than he was, but I knew what a big fish I had on my monetary union line, and I was certainly not disposed to shake it off with talkative clumsiness. I had the advantage of a reliable cabinet (mostly trained in the British Civil Service) and the disadvantage of having to keep in some sort of informal array both the traditionally leaky Commission and six or seven other governments who saw no reason why they should respect secrets of which their big brothers had mostly not bothered to inform them directly. Difficult choices about whether to inform X of what Y had said about Z consequently const.i.tuted a slightly comical sub-plot throughout 1978.

Once the EMS was into the phase of discussion between governments it became very much the creation of European Councils. It remains the most constructive achievement, and one which in itself justifies, this early inst.i.tutional innovation of President Giscard's. One of the main reasons, in my view, why the EMS was able to be so quickly implemented (only sixteen months from Florence, twelve months from my Bonn conversation with Schmidt) was that it did not require a multiplicity of formal, unanimous decisions by the slow-moving Council of Ministers. Heads of government provided the direction and the will, while the central bankers handled much of the detail. Although no one could accuse the latter group (particularly the nodal figure of Otmar Emminger, the President of the Bundesbank) of unseemly enthusiasm, they were at least used to operating informally and quickly. The need for unanimity was obviated by Britain, the only country of the Nine not to partic.i.p.ate in the exchange-rate mechanism, the central feature of the system, simply standing out and not attempting to veto what others did.

The staging points in the fairly rapid journey were Copenhagen on 7/8 April, where under the Council's Danish presidency the purpose and scope of a monetary integration scheme were first expounded to most of the governments; Bremen on 6/7 July, where in the first days of the German presidency the scheme was given a fairly precise shape and it was agreed, with some British reluctance, that governments would study this particular scheme as opposed to ranging all round the intellectual horizon and give their answers at the next meeting; and Brussels on 4/5 December (that next meeting) where, still under the German presidency, the great advances of the year appeared to dissolve into futility at what should have been the exact point of fulfilment. Giscard there became mysteriously sullen, Schmidt became defeatist, and (temporarily) negative answers were received not only from Britain, which was expected, but also from Italy and Ireland, which most certainly was not.

Fortunately, however, the solidity of the previous advances was too great for it all to disintegrate into chagrin and disappointment. The Italian and Irish Governments had fairly rapid second thoughts and announced their renewed adhesion before Christmas. Giscard remained sulky, and held up, nominally on a complicated point of agricultural finance, the inauguration of the scheme which was due for 1 January. Eventually this problem was not so much unravelled as left to dissolve, which process did nothing to explain why it had briefly been given such importance, and the EMS came into operation on 1 March. But this development belongs to 1979. 1978 closed with the system kicking l.u.s.tily as it moved into its tenth month of pregnancy, but with one of its parents (which Giscard had an adequate claim to be) suddenly cool about its birth. As tends to be the case, such belated coolness was ineffective-except to prevent the child being born en beaute.

For the rest, 1978 was a year in which enlargement problems were increasingly prominent on the Community agenda. Greece, which I visited in late September, was by far the furthest down the road to entry of any of the candidate countries. It was also in my view the least qualified for membership, but it was too late for that view greatly to signify, particularly as it was balanced by the high regard which I developed for Konstantinos Karamanlis, then the Greek Prime Minister.

Spain was the most interesting (partly because both the biggest and the one with the strongest tradition of political influence) of the three candidates. I went to Madrid in April, having been to Lisbon the previous November. There was considerable latent opposition within the Community to Iberian enlargement. France was the most hostile, while the Benelux countries were reticent, and Italy uncomfortably torn between Latin solidarity and the rivalries of Mediterranean agriculture. I was firmly of the view that Spain and Portugal met all the three qualifications for membership (they were indisputedly European, democratic-even if only recently-and had a settled desire to join), and that rejection or undue delay would be damaging to them and discreditable to the Community.

Outside Europe my visits of the year were to the Sudan and Egypt in January, to Canada in March and to the United States in mid-December. It was a measure of the dominance of the EMS issue that I went away so little.

In July the Bonn Western Economic Summit took place. There was no trouble on this occasion about my attendance at all the sessions. This Summit was centrally concerned with trying to get an agreement for concerted economic growth. As ten years later, the Americans and most of the others wanted the Germans to expand. Eventually a sensible if not very precise plan was agreed. But it was aborted as a result of the oil price increase which set in a few months later.

The political situation in France has already been described. In Germany politics were reasonably stable. No Federal election was due until 1980 and the SPD/FDP coalition was showing no particular signs of strain. Schmidt/Genscher relations appeared tolerable if not warm. In Britain the Callaghan Government briefly enjoyed its period of greatest stability between late 1977 and the summer holidays of 1978, but subsequently began to look near its end. The avoidance of an election in October 1978 created bewilderment rather than confidence, and even before the 'winter of discontent' a change of government in 1979 became the general expectation.

The Italian Christian Democrat Government survived the tidal wave of Aldo Moro's murder after kidnapping in April and paddled along reasonably steadily under the subtle presidency of Giulio Andreotti. Forlani was Foreign Minister throughout the year. Pandolfi, when he became Treasury Minister in March, made more external impact. In the Netherlands there was a fairly sharp political move to the right, with van Agt (Christian Democrat) having replaced the Socialist den Uyl as Prime Minister in December 1977. The new Government was just as easy to work with on European issues as the old one had been.

In Belgium some fresh twist to the communal problem led to the European fame and oratory of Leo Tindemans being replaced in October by the less distinguished but more direct Vanden Boeynants, a multiple butcher from Ghent. Gaston Thorn (Liberal) continued as both Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Luxembourg. Anker Jrgensen (Socialist) and Jack Lynch (Fianna Fail) were equally undisturbed at the head of the governments of Denmark and Ireland.

The weather (always a preoccupation of mine) was rather better than in 1977. The winter was briefly severe in February, the summer was tolerable without being noteworthy and the autumn was superb, warm and settled until mid-November, and then cold and settled until into Advent.

TUESDAY, 3 JANUARY. London.

Andrew Knight, editor of the Economist, to lunch at the Athenaeum, the first time that I had been there since being elected a member under their special semi-honorary arrangements. Knight agreeable to talk to and indeed we went on upstairs until after 4 o'clock; he was well-informed about Brussels, though not exactly exhilarating in his appraisal of prospects.

WEDNESDAY, 4 JANUARY. London.

Kingman Brewster, American Amba.s.sador in London, for a drink at Brooks's at 12.30.1 had not seen him for over five years and not at all since he had been in London, and was agreeably surprised by an approach from him the day before saying that he much wanted to see me (mainly about European monetary union) during the few days I was in London. Very quick and well worth talking to. Then William Rees-Mogg to lunch. I found William much as always, perhaps ageing a little though he has always looked at least ten years older than he is, and having moved, as he expressed it, somewhat to the right on economic affairs, but politically quite pro-Government: thought Callaghan was doing very well; was detached from but not anti-Mrs Thatcher, and thought the whole prospect for the next election was very open. I did not feel as close to him in outlook as I have done at times in the past.

In the evening Jakie Astor and I gave our dinner for Solly Zuckerman1 at the Capitol Hotel. This was Jakie's idea with which I happily fell in, not because there was any special event to celebrate-many people thought it was some great birthday of Solly's, but in fact he is seventy-three and a half, which is not a particularly notable time for celebration, nor has he for once received any recent honour-he has them all-but we were both in his debt from an entertainment point of view, like him very much, and thought it would give him pleasure, which I hope it did. The others present were Victor Rothschild, Robert Armstrong, Jacques de Beaumarchais, Christopher Soames, Sebastian de Ferranti, Eddie Playfair, Gordon Richardson2 and George Jellicoe.

Soames, booming away, managed to get the thing going very well with general conversation towards the end of dinner, mainly by insulting everybody in sight. 'Tell me, Solly,' he said, 'why was your advice on nuclear matters, and indeed on all defence questions, invariably wrong? Was it primarily stupidity or cowardice? I have often wanted to know.' Solly made a very good response to this and thereafter the evening hardly looked back.

FRIDAY, 6 JANUARY. Brussels and East Hendred.

At 10 o'clock a rather difficult meeting with Ortoli, who came in in a fair state saying that he wished to complain about the arrangements for the debate on EMU in the Parliament in twelve days' time. What he mainly wanted was that he should open it with me, both speaking one after the other, which I think is a foolish idea. The basis of his complaint was that he feels outmanoeuvred since the acceptance of the compromise paper in November by my continuing to proclaim the high road of monetary union while he went on with the details. He was not willing, he said, to play Martha to my Mary (his phrase), and this was accompanied with faint threats that he might not wish to stay in the Commission. He was not disagreeable, as has never been the case with Francis, but his complaint was obviously the result of a lot of brooding over the Christmas holidays.

Francis is a very nice and instinctively loyal man, but he pushed too hard to keep near to his version of the paper in November, and a bit of reaction of this sort is almost inevitable. The trouble is that he likes detail himself and yet doesn't like to feel that he is being left only with the detail, while the broader lines are sketched in by me. Also he is instinctively a very cautious man who likes working in the Finance Ministers' club, and doesn't like sticking his head above parapets in relation to governments and taking risks of this sort.

Then to Zaventem to meet Carter. Waited about twenty-five minutes before his slightly late arrival, talking partly to Simonet, partly to Tindemans, partly to Luns, partly to the King, who arrived very quietly, almost sidled up, and began talking in his soft, agreeable voice with his nice shy smile about his holidays, about Spain politically and various other things. Speeches from the dais, the King doing rather well in English, Carter, also in English, doing I thought less well, getting much too much boom from the microphones, and also making an extraordinary solecism by referring first to 'Your Majesty' and then to 'Your Royal Highness' and 'Her Royal Highness' - who on earth writes his texts I can't think. He then came round and greeted us all with considerable warmth.

Carter drove up to the Berlaymont after a couple of hours with NATO at 2.25. He is a tremendous one for paying attention to crowd impact. As soon as he got out he climbed up-perhaps in order to give himself extra height-on the step of his car and waved enthusiastically, looking away from the welcoming party to the crowd, and all the way round he was very ready for instant response to anyone who was willing to cheer him, which a substantial number of people were. Also, on coming out of my office before moving to the Commission room, he spotted Alexander Phillips, Hayden's eight-year-old son, and immediately went over to him, saying, 'Do you work here?', which was, needless to say, a great success with him and, indeed, with his mother.

First we had the so-called 'restricted session' with five people on either side. I had Haferkamp and Ortoli, Hayden and Fernand Spaak, and he, Brzezinski, Cooper, Deane Hinton (his Amba.s.sador) and Bob Strauss. He asked me what I thought were the main issues for the Community in the next few months; and we talked about the Multilateral Trade Negotiations, relations with the Third World, and then went on to enlargement and monetary union. Also the date of my next visit to Washington, which he hoped would be within six months.

At the Commission meeting itself he and I each read out our formal statements with a little improvisation around them. We then had some fairly brief discussions on MTNs, on energy, and then I asked him to say a word about the future of the dollar on which he was fairly reticent and did little more than whistle into the wind about the underlying strength of the American economy and therefore of the currency (there is a good deal of long-term truth in this). Ortoli got in a good point at the end, saying what we very much looked for was a consistency of support for the dollar now that such support had started so that we knew where we were and could plan and proceed on this basis. Carter left punctually at 4 o'clock. I then did a forty-minute press conference.

I left the office at 7.10 and made a remarkably quick journey: 7.35 from Zaventem, London Airport at 7.25 (English time), and an hour after that, at 8.25,1 walked into the house at East Hendred.

SAt.u.r.dAY, 7 JANUARY. East Hendred.

To Sevenhampton for lunch with Ann Fleming, who had the Donaldsons, Diana Phipps and John Sparrow.3 We returned via Buscot, as I wanted to drive round the park for the first time since Gavin's4 death and see what it looked like under the new Lord Faringdon. On the way round one of the back roads we got into the most appalling skid, which I suppose was due to my going slightly too fast on mud, so that the heavy car started slewing and I had great difficulty in preventing it plunging into one of the tree trunks which lined the road. I think we did five or six slews before I was able to get it back under control. Back at home we had my old protection officer (Ron Rathbone) for a drink-a pity he wasn't protecting us at Buscot. Beautiful day, wonderful winter light, which was partly the reason we nearly killed ourselves.

TUESDAY, 10 JANUARY. Brussels.

At 12 o'clock I spoke to about a hundred people organized by a European Federalist propagandist body, of which George Thomson had just handed over the presidency to Gaston Thorn. Quite an excitable little gathering. My reception at a gathering like this has been much improved by the Florence initiative.

An interview with Perlot,5 the spokesman for the Italian Permanent Representation and their very strongly supported candidate as a replacement to Ruggiero as head of our Spokesman's Group. As a result of the Italians making it so clear that they much wanted him to have the job, I started a little biased against him, but in fact found him an extremely engaging and intelligent man and therefore swung in his favour.

WEDNESDAY, 11 JANUARY. Brussels.

A short and relatively easy Commission meeting from 10.10 to 1.20. Lunch with Hayden, going on a long time while he argued with compelling logic that he thought he ought definitely not to stay much beyond the end of the second year, that if he was ever going to leave me it would be time to go, that five years was about long enough to work for anyone, otherwise one became too much their creature. It was all done in the nicest possible way. I regretfully think it a sensible decision. G.o.d knows what it will be like without him, however.

THURSDAY, 12 JANUARY. Brussels.

An important and potentially difficult lunch with Ortoli rue de Praetere, not made easier by the fact that he was drinking nothing, which is unusual. However, after a slightly sticky start, the occasion definitely went rather well and was worthwhile. Rather typically with him, we did not get final agreement at the end as to exactly when we should speak in the EMU debate in the Parliament. He said he would reflect upon it, but we were obviously en bonne voie. He made it quite clear that he was anxious to build bridges and relations perked up a good deal as a result of the lunch. Lesson: it is particularly worth seeing people at times when a looming dispute makes one loath to do so. As he reasonably hinted, if I had had a talk alone with him at an earlier stage this difficulty would probably have been avoided.

Dinner party composed of Davignons, Tugendhats, Ebermanns of my cabinet, and Laura. The best evening I have had with the Davignons; Francie out of her summer purdah and animated, and Stevy very funny; a lot of anecdotal conversation about world political figures, particularly Americans, over the past fifteen years or so; it was mostly Stevy and I who were talking after dinner. We all sat over the table until midnight.

FRIDAY, 13 JANUARY. Brussels.