IGC tightrope walker

Date: 16/01/1997

SOME men are born into foreign affairs, some achieve influence in foreign affairs and some have foreign affairs thrust upon them.

Hans van Mierlo, the man who will oversee the Dutch presidency of the EU, falls squarely into the last category.

When the Netherlands' first-ever 'purple' coalition of free-market Liberals, social-market Liberals and Social Democrats were haggling over ministerial portfolios back in 1994, Van Mierlo took a firm grip of the short straw.

Members of the centrist Democrats 66 Party felt their charismatic leader would have been more use to them at home.

“Many people would have preferred him to stay in domestic politics because he was a party leader and should have been on the outside controlling the government,” says a leading party member. “But he had the traumatic experience of staying outside in the early Seventies and was not keen to repeat it.”

Resisting party pressure, on 25 August 1994, Van Mierlo took on the job of acting as the face of the Netherlands abroad and has never looked back.

Although it was hardly his childhood dream, the 65-year-old Brabander insists he is happy where he is. “This endless talking about me being in the wrong place at foreign affairs has to be countered,” he said recently.

According to his detractors, Van Mierlo is too emotional, too broad-brush and even too pro-European for the job. Many also wonder whether he will be physically capable of juggling his jobs as D'66 Party leader, deputy prime minister, foreign minister and the man charged with keeping the EU on track for the next six months.

His bitterest enemies in the free-market Liberal VVD Party were so worried by his appointment that they put their man, Michiel Patijn, in to act as Van Mierlo's watchdog.

But it is certainly true that Van Mierlo is a rare beast a Dutch politician with charisma, a fact that even his opponents would acknowledge.

Variously described as a 'teddy bear' by women (according to one opinion poll, well over 50&percent; of the females questioned would like to sleep with him) or as a 'good lad' by men, Van Mierlo does not fit the stereotype of a foreign minister à la Douglas Hurd, Warren Christopher or Hans-Dietrich Genscher.

He sits sprawled, as the Dutch say, like a bag of wheat in a chair, sucking on sweets like an addict. He takes forever to come to the point and likes to wax philosophical rather than get down to business a trait that his boss, Prime Minister Wim Kok, cannot abide.

The aftermath of a Van Mierlo briefing is usually characterised by journalists scratching their heads and wondering what he said.

On trips abroad, the foreign minister is generally accompanied by his long-time companion Aafke a fact welcomed by his civil servants because she makes sure he is tucked up in bed in good time instead of having another drink or digging into his government papers.

Van Mierlo was always meant to represent a different type of politics, a break with the stuffy old past.

Hailing from Breda in Brabant and of good Catholic stock (his full name is Henricus Antonius Franciscus Maria Oliva van Mierlo), the young Hans spent eight years studying law at the Catholic University of Nijmegen. Even then, his unconventional nature was apparent.

“I remember him as being a 'strange duck in the water',” says one of his fellow students.

Unusually for that time, Van Mierlo declined to join any of the old students' associations and went his own way. Leaving university in 1960, he decided to eschew the law and instead became a journalist at the Amsterdam-based Het Algemeen Handelsblad (now merged into NRC Handelsblad), becoming home affairs editor and finally chief leader-writer.

The normal career path of a journalist beckoned, but was cut short in 1966 by a storm sparked by the marriage of the Dutch Princess Beatrix.

Van Mierlo's colleague on the paper, Hans Gruijters, was a VVD member of Amsterdam city council, but was also a republican. When Gruijters refused to attend the wedding, he was thrown out of the VVD a catalyst for him and his friend Van Mierlo. Together with 35 other malcontents, the two issued an appeal to the people, calling for a new politics and an end to the verzuiling or 'pillar-like' society of the past dominated by Socialist, Catholic and Protestant cabals.

Many of the younger generation, influenced by the Kennedy presidency in the US and the various civil rights struggles abroad, wanted their own bloodless 'revolution' at home.

D'66 attracted dissidents from the VVD, the socially-liberal Catholics and members of the Socialist PvdA concerned about what they regarded as their parties' authoritarian approach. Most of all, the D'66 leadership wanted to bring an end to the Christian Democrats' stranglehold on the country's government.

The party got off to a flying start and Van Mierlo became its first chairman a year later, serving until 1974.

Van Mierlo has always been reluctant to give D'66 an underpinning philosophy, believing that the party's willingness to take up the “best parts” of all ideologies was its major strength. Indeed, when D'66 deputies in the European Parliament decided to join the Liberal Group, he was not at all happy. However, this reluctance to come off the fence ironically has tended to lead him towards the left.

The massive electoral defeat of 1972, when the party's share of the popular vote fell from 11&percent; to 6&percent;, followed Van Mierlo's decision to share a common political platform the progressive agreement with the PvdA.

“The problem was that we were perceived by many to be a pinkish party,” says Laurens Brinkhorst, a founding member of the party, former minister and now a D'66 MEP. He and the new party leader Jan Terlouw decided to try and establish some clear water between D'66 and the PvdA, and give the party some ideological roots.

Van Mierlo retired from politics until the very moment when his 'pinkish' image was needed again.

In another Christian-Democrat-led coalition government in 1981, Brinkhorst toyed with the idea of becoming defence minister at a highly sensitive moment, just as the US was putting the Netherlands under intense pressure to provide a base for Pershing cruise missiles to combat the Soviet threat.

“I was much more hawkish and I was afraid of splitting the party,” admits Brinkhorst. “Van Mierlo is definitely no pacifist, but he had more of a left-leaning image and image is important in these matters.”

Van Mierlo took the job for one year before the government collapsed.

Although it was short-lived, the post gave Van Mierlo a taste for foreign affairs at a highly charged time, obliging him to deal directly with the US diplomatic and military establishment over a vital national issue.

By the end of the Eighties, the lean times for D'66 came to a halt.

In 1989, the party won 12 parliamentary seats. Five years later, it doubled that number. D'66's hour had come. Its growing strength had sapped enough Christian Democrat voters to eject the party from power at last, and D'66 was able to act as a bridge between the secular left and right a role Van Mierlo felt it was made for.

It is ironic that the foreign minister's greatest enemies are within the governing coalition. VVD leader Frits Bolkestijn does not like him and has targeted him for an array of personal and political attacks.

The VVD, which is gaining steadily in the polls, has its eyes on the prize of the 1998 elections. Bolkestijn is convinced that he can win back a chunk of the D'66 electorate. “In this respect, Van Mierlo's EU presidency will be crucial,” says Brinkhorst. “He is seen as the man who shaped D'66, and how he performs will make a difference both for the party and the prospects for European integration.”

Van Mierlo knows the tightrope he will be walking, saying recently: “I received no congratulations from other governments on assuming the EU presidency, only heartfelt commiserations.”