Is there a Commissioner in the house?

Date: 31/10/1996

All the rules of diplomacy and etiquette were broken last week, and all because of a temper tantrum by French President Jacques Chirac over the way one of Trade Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan's speeches was interpreted.

The Chirac entourage was in Jordan when word came through about Brittan's dissertation in Paris.

Sir Leon's theme was that the lack of a common foreign and security policy (CFSP) was adversely affecting the Union's role in the Middle East peace process.

Chirac, no doubt feeling the intervention was untimely to say the least, put out an all-points bulletin to find the Commissioner, who by this time had returned to the UK and was enjoying a performance of Wagner's Das Rheingold at Covent Garden opera house.

It is not clear whether Brittan's aides took the decision to interrupt the performance, or whether Chirac's team insisted upon it, but some brave soul bears responsibility for having the Commissioner paged and dragged away from one of his favourite theatrical offerings.

Brittan's response to the discovery that the excuse for this gross intrusion of privacy was a drama of considerably less magnitude than what he was forced to miss on stage is not recorded.