Doyen quits ringside seat

Date: 04/12/1997

Although former ambassador Philippe de Schoutheete has left Coreper, he intends to remain in the EU arena. Rory Watson reports

THE position of doyen among the élite group of EU ambassadors has temporarily become vacant following the retirement of Philippe de Schoutheete de Tervarent.

As a member for ten years of the small powerhouse which effectively runs the Union machine, the former Belgian ambassador had an experience of EU affairs which few could match.

Not only did he outlast 31 other Union ambassadors who moved on to different diplomatic challenges during that decade, but he also witnessed the EU's golden age of the late Eighties, the ups and downs of Maastricht, and the era of the Amsterdam Treaty.

De Schoutheete's many contributions to these and other developments were warmly recalled in a series of glowing tributes by his colleagues at his own farewell meeting, with the European Commission's Secretary-General Carlo Trojan suggesting that with his departure, Coreper (the Committee of EU permanent representatives) had lost "its soul and conscience".

He himself has no doubt that it was time to retire gracefully. "Ten years in Coreper is quite enough for any normal human being," he explains tactfully.

And as he bid his colleagues farewell, De Schoutheete told them: "I will not really miss Coreper, but I will miss the people. It is a privileged place in which to make personal friendships."

From his ringside vantage point, De Schoutheete has seen an evolution in the Committee's fortunes over the years.

"The institution has undoubtedly been strengthened by the treaty articles and certainly during the period between 1987 and 1992, that is prior to Maastricht, Coreper won increased influence. Perhaps because foreign ministers were more reluctant to get involved in Community affairs, preferring political issues, so much fell back on the permanent representatives' shoulders," he suggests.

But over the past four to five years, a new trend has emerged as the Union's activities have expanded and senior national officials increasingly conduct business in other big-hitting committees dealing with political, monetary and justice and home affairs issues.

"They are reluctant to accept Coreper's coordinating role. It is not just a question of bureaucratic in-fighting. The big difference is that the civil servants from national capitals meet only once or twice a month. Coreper, on the other hand, has no specific axe to grind in its own national bureaucracy and meets twice a week. This creates an atmosphere and a spirit of cooperation you do not find elsewhere," says De Schoutheete.

He is undoubtedly well placed to consider the sometimes tense relationship between the various committees from more than one perspective.

After a diplomatic career which took him to Cairo, Madrid and Bonn, and included a spell as the foreign minister's chef de cabinet, De Schoutheete spent two years as Belgium's political director immediately before becoming his country's permanent representative to the EU.

While he enjoyed both posts, he has found greater substance in his more recent role over the past decade. "At the time, the political committee was very declamatory. Much of the time was spent drafting precise texts. Coreper work is more satisfying. It has more substance and frequently involves legal texts where you have to weigh up the costs and benefits," he explains.

De Schoutheete accepts that rivalries between the different committees of top diplomats are perhaps inevitable as officials, jealously protective of their own roles, forget that ultimately they are in the same boat and serve the same political masters.

And while he feels that the friction has become more marked in recent years, he believes the Maastricht Treaty move to integrate the political and economic aspects of Union business more closely makes sense.

"You cannot separate external economic and trade relations from external political relations. They are closely linked and since the Union is largely a civil power, its main element of pressure frequently is financial aid, economic concessions and trade concessions. These are political instruments which need to be managed in a coordinated way and sometimes coordination between the political committee and Coreper is less than one might wish," he argues.

Having survived two bruising intergovernmental conferences on the Union's constitutional reform, De Schoutheete openly admits that the formula for renegotiating the EU's treaties is far from perfect. But like most other critics, he has no ready alternative to hand.

The breadth of Union business, he insists, makes it imperative that only heads of state and government have the authority to push for compromises and to set the final seal of approval on any reshaped agenda.

But it is the way IGC negotiations deteriorate into a last-minute frenzy in the early hours of the final morning that De Schoutheete believes needs to be addressed.

Attention has already been drawn to some of the high profile disagreements - such as that over the European Parliament's legislative powers - which emerged once the Amsterdam negotiations had closed. However, there are different interpretations - with legal ramifications - of at least a dozen other smaller items.

"I am less convinced about a system whereby heads of government meet for two days and two nights and just legislate in one go. I think that is probably madness," says De Schoutheete.

"None of our national legislatures functions on this basis. It is a very good basis for political compromises. But when it involves drafting legal texts with which you have to live for years and which have to be interpreted by the European Court of Justice, you probably need a little more time."

Instead, De Schoutheete would like to see government leaders gather on several occasions in the final days of an IGC and for their decisions to be checked by lawyers between one meeting and the next.

In the light of the Amsterdam summit's refusal to grasp the nettle of institutional reform, Belgium's then ambassador defends his government's decision to table what many saw as a provocative statement linking enlargement with the need to rethink the composition of the Commission and Council of Ministers almost immediately.

The move was supported by France and Italy, but member states such as Finland, Austria and Luxembourg, which had initially shown interest in the idea, eventually backed off.

Despite the lack of wider support, the former EU ambassador maintains that it was politically important to table such a declaration. The differing size of the countries which supported it, he adds, also clearly illustrates that sensitive questions of Commission membership and weighted votes in the Council of Ministers do not necessarily pit large member states against small ones, as is widely believed.

As he looks back over a lengthy political career which began 41 years ago, De Schoutheete has little hesitation in pointing to the second half of 1993 as one of the major high points.

"I was president of Coreper during the Belgian presidency. We had the conclusion of the Uruguay Round, a decision on the sites of Union institutions and agencies, and the division of structural funds, which was not an easy game. We settled quite a lot of problems and reached an inter-institutional agreement with the European Parliament on budgetary procedure which many thought unattainable," he remembers, chalking up the achievements.

Looking to the future, the former ambassador has every intention of remaining in the EU arena by pursuing academic interests at Louvain-la-Neuve's Institute of European Studies.

Freedom from the need to deal with pressing day-to-day problems will allow De Schoutheete to tackle a theme dear to his heart and which he explores in ten elegant essays in his book Une Europe Pour Tous, published on the eve of his retirement.

"The point I make is that we need to have a clearer view of where we are going if we want to carry public opinion with us," he explains, adding: "Expanding the Union up to the Russian border will entail sacrifices and I do not feel you can get the public to make sacrifices if it is not clearer about what we are trying to do."

Whereas peace between France and Germany was a sufficiently strong incentive 40 years ago, De Schoutheete firmly believes that other explanations are now needed and he gently criticises the political élite for not providing them.

As he embarks on a new phase of his career, there is little doubt that he intends to do his bit to correct that imbalance.

Major feature on the retirement of Belgium's Ambassador to the EU, Philippe de Schoutheete.