Prisoners of their job descriptions

Date: 13/05/1999

As the battle over who should become the new head of the World Trade Organisation intensifies, Tim Jones questions whether such cat-fights are worth the political capital they use up

AN ALMIGHTY row is going on in Geneva over which of two highly competent administrators should be allowed to run an agency which arbitrates in trade disputes.

That, in a nutshell, is what the argument over who should become head of the World Trade Organisation boils down to. Hardly exciting stuff, but then the truth rarely is. Hype is better. A newspaper story last week which began, “World trade was thrown into chaos after -”, grabbed the reader's attention all right, but was let down by being drivel.

The WTO is a forum for settling commercial disputes and its new director-general will - after consulting all 134 member states - draw up a negotiating plan for the impending Millennium Round of multilateral trade talks. Full stop.

This is a job for a competent public servant who has the patience to try to marry trade policy views as diverse as those of Malaysian Premier Mahatir Mohamed and US President Bill Clinton. It should be a matter of total indifference whether Thai Deputy Premier Supachai Panitchpakdi or former New Zealand Prime Minister Mike Moore takes over at the helm of the WTO.

When the last round of multilateral talks seemed to be stalling, Arthur Dunkel, the quietly methodical Swiss head of the then General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, pushed things along with his 'draft final act'. But he did not do this in a vacuum. He consulted the trading powers, included what they might agree to and junked what they could never accept.

Dunkel's flamboyant Irish successor Peter Sutherland used to let it be know to journalists that he had “banged heads together” to conclude the Uruguay Round, but this was all showmanship.

Anyone who remembers the last days of the round in the autumn of 1993 knows that the deal was done by US and EU trade chiefs Mickey Kantor and Sir Leon Brittan and their sectoral negotiators during a series of all-night sessions in Brussels and Washington.

The other 100-plus GATT signatories went along with the EU-US deal. As for Sutherland, Brittan and Kantor kept him informed, he produced his usual quota of television sound bites and rang a bell to toll the end of the round.

As EU governments begin one of their regular squabbles over top posts in the Union's key institutions, it is well worth remembering that, for nine out of ten jobs, nationality and political allegiance are irrelevant.

In January 1993, French Socialist Jacques Delors reshuffled his European Commission team and panicked conservatives by appointing fellow 'Red' Karel van Miert to the post of Commissioner for competition just vacated by Brittan, the libéral anglo-saxone.

Van Miert himself appeared to believe that he could bring a dose of centre-left common sense to the anti-trust dossier. In his first post-appointment interview, he said: “It is not wise to seek competition at all costs and nothing but competition.”

As he prepares for academic retirement with the departure of Jacques Santer's Commission, Van Miert is regarded as anything but a competition soft touch. The Belgian Socialist is seen as the iron man who busted monopolies, took on the might of the Boeing aerospace giant, fought the German government over the illegal diversion of subsidies and ordered dawn raids on Volkswagen, Asea Brown Boveri and national football associations.

Some in the outgoing Commission, including Santer himself and Acting Research Commissioner Edith Cresson, see Van Miert as he himself saw Brittan six years ago before he walked into the Directorate-General for competition (DGIV) - namely, as a 'prisoner of his services'.

They are wrong. Van Miert's role is quasi-judicial. For all his talk of flexibility and bringing some political savvy to the job, the Competition Commissioner has his hands tied by Articles 85-86 and 92-93 of the Treaty of Rome, the merger regulation and reams of case law at the European Court of Justice.

The French would love to get their hands on this portfolio but their candidate, whether from the left or the right, would be equally 'imprisoned' by DGIV within a month.

Neil Kinnock made a similar discovery when he took over the transport policy job in 1995. Coming from a country whose national airline had gone through painful restructuring and still had to face technically bankrupt state-owned rivals, he was determined to stick to the 'one time, last time' principle when it came to allowing subsidies to lame-duck flag-carriers.

Yet there was Spanish airline Iberia seeking a cash injection, because it had blown the €750-million capital increase allowed as recently as July 1992 on the express condition that it asked for no more aid until the end of 1996.

Kinnock was stunned to discover that 'one time, last time' actually meant 'as often as you like as long as you obey European law'. He could not advocate private ownership for Iberia, which meant he had to consider the capital increase by the airline's state shareholder on its own merits.

Kinnock and acting agriculture supremo Franz Fischler are often cited as Commissioners whose personality and political feel has made a real difference in their policy areas.

Admittedly, the transport dossier had gone to sleep under Marcelino Oreja but, for all his enthusiasm, Kinnock's big ideas - winning a mandate to negotiate an EU-US 'open skies' deal and saving rail freight from extinction - have been sat on by member states.

Fischler, an intellectual driving-force for a pre-enlargement overhaul of the Common Agricultural Policy, impressed his peers and his staff, but it only took one night in Berlin for French President Jacques Chirac to drive a coach and horses through his proposals for CAP reform.

A sensible government would let the best administrators take the administrative jobs and hang on to enough political capital to win the political battles that matter.