Belgium’s driving force

Date: 27/03/1997

SUCH is his passion for European and international affairs that Viscount Etienne Davignon only agreed to join Belgium's holding company, Société Générale de Belgique, in 1985 on condition that he could devote a quarter of his time to the causes closest to his heart.

Since then, the former European Commissioner - 'Stevie Wonder' to his friends - has become a part-time de luxe troubleshooter for the institution he served full time in the late Seventies and early Eighties Davignon is currently chairing a committee charged with breaking a 20-year-old deadlock over the proposed European statute for public limited companies.

He has also just tabled a set of proposals aimed at revitalising the EU's research policy and is one of the senior personalities entrusted by the International European Movement with drafting a report on the Union in the third millennium.

The viscount not only devotes considerable energy to Europe - which he calls “the most modern idea of these last 50 years” - but is also a key player in the private sector world-wide: he sits on the boards of Gianni Agnelli's Fiat, Japanese giant Fujitsu, French travel group Accor and others.

“In some ways, he is the exact opposite of former US President Gerald Ford,” jokes a retired Belgian diplomat and one-time colleague. “Etienne has this amazing ability to do several things simultaneously.”

This gift is demonstrated by his ability, for example, “to actively participate in a complicated meeting while writing a report on something totally different and fumbling with his pipe at the same time”.

Davignon's taste for international affairs is a family tradition: the son of a Belgian diplomat and grandson of a foreign affairs minister, he was born in Budapest on 4 October 1932 and lived in both Warsaw and Berlin in his early years.

After spending four years as a schoolboy in Switzerland, sheltered from World War II, Etienne returned to his family's native country for a Catholic education befitting an adolescent of his rank, at a Benedictine college and later at the Catholic University of Leuven, where he read law, economics and Thomistic philosophy.

Davignon regarded chancery life as anachronistic and dull, and claims he only joined the profession to please his father, Jacques.

But he managed to avoid boredom: his first overseas appointment took him to Congo, Belgium's former African colony, where at the age of 27 he participated in the independence talks.

On 6 July 1960, he sent a telegram to Brussels claiming that “all was well” and the atmosphere excellent. A few hours later, Congo collapsed.

Remaining in Léopoldville after Belgium and Congo broke off their diplomatic relations, this dutiful civil servant was briefly imprisoned. But, having won the respect of local leaders, he eventually became a personal guest of President Joseph Kasavubu.

In Belgian diplomatic circles, already very appreciative of Davignon's wit, officials swapped anecdotes about him “borrowing” abandoned cars in the anarchic streets of Léopoldville, or calmly advising nervous machine-gunners to stop shooting at random in the night because enemies could spot the reddening mouths of their weapons.

And in spite of his dramatically wrong initial assessment of the situation in Congo, Davignon emerged from his African adventure with an enhanced reputation.

In 1961, he was asked to join the cabinet of Paul-Henri Spaak, who had returned to Belgian politics as minister of foreign affairs. Before the age of 30, Davignon had become Spaak's chef de cabinet and closest assistant.

The viscount felt no particular affinity with the minister's Socialist Party but still regards 'Spaakism' - referring to his mentor's leading role in fathering European integration - as one of his firmest political convictions.

As he embraced Spaak's European ideals, Davignon also found love: he married Belgian aristocrat Françoise de Cumont, with whom he had a son and two daughters.

When Pierre Harmel, a Christian Democrat, took over from Spaak, Davignon stayed on as chef de cabinet. In those days, rumour had it that it was he who held the real power: a cartoonist once depicted the minister as the viscount's driver.

Davignon became political director of the Belgian foreign affairs ministry in 1969, a post which he held until 1976. While there, he fostered the creation of the International Energy Agency and improved the functioning of the EEC institutions by setting up the committee of member states' political directors which still bears his name.

But Davignon's real moments of European glory were yet to come.

In 1977, he was appointed European Commissioner for industry, research and energy.

His baptism of fire was the dramatic steel crisis prompted by global recession and increased international competition. Vested with considerable powers in the framework of the European Coal and Steel Community, Davignon steered the industry through the crisis, imposing capacity reductions softened by social programmes and state aid while organising protectionist measures against American and Japanese imports.

“At the end of the day, Davignon managed a 31-million-tonne reduction in capacity and steelmakers had learned to produce more efficiently. But the whole thing cost a lot of taxpayers' money,” admits a Commission official.

In the meantime, the viscount, a supporter of Belgian football club Anderlecht, had also addressed a problem of great personal interest which continues to capture headlines today: the right of soccer players to move freely from one member state to another in the single market.

But Davignon, who appeared during the first steel crisis as a potent initiator and manager of a truly European industrial policy, was far from being unanimously appreciated.

The German press resented his bossy attitude towards steelmaker Klöckner and labelled him “the red viscount from Brussels”. Successive bids for the Commission presidency in 1980 and 1984 ended in failure.

On the first occasion, the then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher opposed his nomination. Four years later, German Economy Minister Otto von Lambsdorff did the same, calling Davignon an “interventionist”. The job went to the French Socialist government's champion Jacques Delors.

In January 1985, the unemployed viscount - realising he was too old to become a professional football player - considered teaching or entering politics, but eventually took on responsibility for the Société Générale de Belgique's international strategy.

Once again, he faced a major crisis: in January 1988, Olivetti's chairman Carlo de Benedetti launched a hostile take-over bid for the antiquated holding company which controlled huge chunks of Belgian industry, with interests in the banking, energy, engineering, steel industry and mining sectors.

The French financial group Suez was called to the rescue of the vieille dame and Davignon was appointed chairman.

The viscount, who will turn 65 in October, does not plan to retire yet and claims he wants to set up a structure that will outlive him.

Whether he will succeed remains unclear. Many commentators regard him - personally - as the last redoubt of Belgian influence over Société Générale since it fell into the hands of Groupe Suez.

Similar questions arise over his legacy at the European Commission. During his second mandate, Davignon set up the Esprit programme in an attempt to create a common EU research and development strategy, rather than having governments simply carve up European budgets according to their national priorities.

Fifteen years later, his high-level committee remarked that Europe still lacked a coherent strategy and called for qualified majority voting to be extended to decisions in the research field.

To many, this appears to be the only solution as a generation of forceful pro-European negotiators in the Davignon mould reaches retirement age.