Hacks will resort to anything

Date: 13/02/1997

The Dutch have got a fixation about Noordwijk, an unpronounceable place hiding from the North Sea behind some feeble sand dunes.

For most people, it is hell on earth at this time of year; an out-of-season, gale-battered piece of tacky coastline along which the sound of summer jollity has been replaced by the clatter of empty beach ball racks banging in the wind against shuttered souvenir shops.

Noordwijk is meant to be sleeping now, building its strength for the summer season yet to come. In a few months it will be full of wind-swept, red-faced informal holiday-makers wheeling pushchairs along the promenade and dripping ice-cream down their fronts.

But Noordwijk can only sleep fitfully this winter because of course we have a Dutch presidency in full swing and that means poor old Noordwijk has to step out to greet us, caught in its hair-curlers and pyjamas and no make-up for all the world to see.

Last week it was being patronised, and that indeed is the word, by limousine-swept red-faced informal EU ministers who were ushered here as part of the Dutch presidency festivities.

We have been here before. We shall be here again. Because the Dutch are nothing if not consistent: why have one summit in Maastricht when you can have two (as they did in their last two presidencies and probably would have done again this time had it not been for their desire to avoid the new EU treaty being dubbed Maastricht II)? Why have one informal ministerial meeting miles from anywhere when you can have several?

It is hard to see how Noordwijk has gained from this Euro-presidential spotlight, which was first turned on it in the early Nineties.

There is no huge conference centre built on the back of all the publicity which has failed to surround these informal meetings. The infrastructure is much as it was in the Fifties, I guess, in the heyday of domestic seaside holidays. The promotional brochures lying dusty on the reception counters of the unseasonal hotels speak nothing of the resort's status as an informal ministerial haven.

“Come to Noordwijk! Holiday fun for all the family! As used for informal ministerial meetings by senior government ministers of 15 nations! Hotel discounts for multi-person room occupancy!”

I don't think so. Instead, the sand is driven across the road by the prevailing force niner and builds little pyramids in pavement cracks and sheltered corners. The pounding sea is slate grey, like the suits of the formal ministers attending this informal meeting.

Instead of informal Ecofin meetings and informal home affairs meetings, the Dutch should stage an informal meeting of tourism ministers here, and let them see what the industry is up against.

In the pre-Maastricht Treaty era, during another Dutch presidency, we trekked here for head-banging talks on the then rather esoteric notion of economic and monetary union.

“What is this?” people cried. “Where are we? Why?”

The locals peered through lace curtains at figures in white shirts and ties turning up on their doorsteps in big black cars. Government ministers were ferried at regular intervals by limousine the few dozens yards between the hotel housing the talks and the hotel housing the hacks, because to risk walking along the promenade would be to take on the elements and lose.

Noordwijk in winter is one of those desolate places which is targeted by whatever powers drive the weather. Along the sea front it takes three footsteps to advance one pace forwards.

In that regard, of course, it is a highly symbolic venue for such meetings.

The idea, I suppose, is that in this holiday setting ministers will relax, slip into their metaphorical shell suits and see Europe's problems in a new half-light, fog and sleeting rain permitting. But they can't, of course, because we are here, we the media, watching every informal move, demanding quotes and comments on the informal record.

There is no real difference these days between these informal meetings and the ones in the Justus Lipsius in Brussels and, of course, in the whatever-the-building-is-called on the Kirchberg in Luxembourg. Except, of course, that you don't get salt water spray in your face in other settings.

Yes, I know informals can't make decisions, but I've been to several million formals at which no one could make a decision either, so that's a red herring.

No, the fact is that the whole purpose of these informals has been negated by the recognition accorded to the Fourth Estate. There are briefings, updates, press conferences and all the usual stage-managed paraphernalia of other ministerial meetings.

And yet informals were first established to get away from the likes of us. You can turn up if you like, officials used to say, but there will be no information, no interviews, no nothing. This is informal, private, secret. Go away.

And we did. Can you imagine it? We actually left ministers alone to talk amongst themselves without pressure, to cogitate on life and its meaning and not have to answer to us, the judge and jury, immediately afterwards.

Until one day all hell broke loose. There was an informal meeting of foreign ministers somewhere in the Flemish countryside, a place not unlike Noordwijk but without the waves and the wind. And we all turned up and stood around the gates of an old château where our ministerial quarry was hiding. And we refused to go away. And they refused to see us.

The outcome? The ministerial cars were driven across fields around the back of the château to escape our incisive questioning. We could only stand and stare. What price openness and transparency, we all wondered at the time.

So now informals are anything but. Expectations are as high among the media in the Dutch holiday paradise of Noordwijk as they are in the more solemn surroundings of Rond-Point Schuman.

I think what I am saying is that there are times when ministers should be allowed to meet and bore themselves to death without the great media circus dancing attendance at every turn.

It is probably sacrilegious to say it, but even in this high-tech information age, it is perfectly possible for a day or two to elapse without dramatic Euro-news occurring.

But we will not be diverted from our mission to inform, not even by cunning enemy tactics of staging meetings in remote, inaccessible corners of the world like Noordwijk.

We hacks will brave sea spray, sand dunes, donkey rides and gale force North Sea winds to get our story. Nothing, but nothing, not even Noordwijk in winter, will put us off.

Nice try Netherlands, but it just won't work.