Europe’s legal referee

Date: 16/07/1998

JEAN-Louis Dewoost is French.

Why this particular detail should have any more significance than the fact that the head of the European Commission's legal service enjoys walking, likes the occasional visit to the opera or is married with three children is, on the face of it, hard to understand.

But talk to anyone who knows or has had professional dealings with the 60-year-old career civil servant and the fact that he hails from the land of Voltaire, De Gaulle and Claude François will fairly soon find its way into the conversation.

“It appears that the French still know his telephone number,” says one senior Commission official drily.

What is beyond question is that Dewoost has one of the most influential jobs in the European Union. Within the Commission, only the secretary-general - currently Dutchman Carlo Trojan - is a more powerful official.

Dewoost is present at all Commission meetings and attends the preparatory chef de cabinet sessions which precede them. Any legislative proposal emanating from the Commission has to be vetted by his staff for possible conflicts with the Union's founding treaties and his service plays a key part in all legal proceedings the institution may be involved in at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.

Dewoost and his staff also have to stay in regular contact with the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers as proposals for new laws wind their way through the Union's excruciatingly complex procedural maze.

Given the influence the head of the legal service has over the way EU legislation is framed and developed, it is not hard to see why a national government would be very keen to have 'their man' in such a key position.

But not everyone shares the view that Dewoost takes his cues from Paris or from anyone else, for that matter.

Some observers of the head of the legal service argue he is quite simply an independently minded and professional civil servant who is not afraid to present people with occasionally unpalatable truths.

“Sometimes he gives advice that he knows people don't want to hear,” says a senior Commission official.

Dewoost's supporters say he examines each case that comes his way on its merits and tries to assess whether it is compatible with EU law before giving his opinions.

They say that this may lead to accusations that he can be a touch conservative or unimaginative, but certainly not that he allows himself to be influenced by outside forces - French or otherwise.

Supporters of the 'Dewoost as French plant' perspective point to the furore which surrounded the top fonctionnaire's appointment to his current duties in 1987. He was working as the head of the Council of Ministers' legal service when he was asked by the then Commission President Jacques Delors to take up his present job.

Council contemporaries remember a man who was as interested in the political side of decisions taken by top national diplomats in Coreper - the committee of member states' ambassadors to the EU - as in the dry legal opinions he was supposed to be preparing.

“He was always referring to the Coreper decision and not to the decision of the legal committee he was supposed to be chairing,” says one former colleague. “He was an excellent lawyer but not for legal reasons. In my opinion he would rather listen to the political side than to the legal side.”

Although he sometimes displayed a penchant for straying into the territory of his political counterparts, Dewoost's ability as a civil servant was seldom questioned.

Nevertheless, there was some surprise when Delors asked his fellow countryman to head the Commission's legal service because the German official who already held the post, Claus-Dieter Ehlermann, was considered to be doing an outstanding job.

“There was some kerfuffle when Ehlermann was shifted aside,” recalls one long-time observer of Brussels politics. “It caused a lot of hard feeling at the time because Ehlermann was a fine head of the legal service.”

However, the French lobby reportedly pushed hard for Dewoost to get the job because the post of secretary-general had recently been awarded to Briton David Williamson.

Other observers saw the appointment of Dewoost as part of a Delors master plan to 'hot-wire' the Commission by installing a network of trusted aides in key jobs.

“In 1987, Delors installed Jean-Louis Dewoost, a Frenchman, as head of the legal service, displacing a German. From then on political considerations were more likely to colour that service's advice,” says Charles Grant in his book about Delors' Brussels years Inside the House that Jacques Built.

Grant argues that Delors often used 'politicised' legal advice from Dewoost in order to win arguments with other Commissioners. The tactic was apparently employed during tussles with Trade Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan, who was then pushing to enforce EU competition policy, when he tried to make French companies repay allegedly illegal state aid.

Some insiders say Dewoost's readiness to see things from a Gallic perspective are still in evidence today.

“Sometimes his Frenchness pops out,” insists one senior source. “His reasoning is sometimes a bit hard to understand,” agrees another.

One top official points out that cases against national governments' alleged infringements of single market legislation being prepared by Commissioner Mario Monti are particularly prone to last-minute queries from the legal supremo.

Critics say that the most recent example of this has been Dewoost's continuing reluctance to recommend that the Commission take legal action over France's Loi Evin, which restricts television advertising at sporting events.

They argue that Dewoost's concern about the risk of harming his job prospects back home is one of the reasons the Commission has still not taken a decision on the case.

Other observers suggest, however, that it is not Dewoost who has been delaying things, but Commissioner President Jacques Santer himself. They say that in the aftermath of the 'mad cow' crisis, Santer is reluctant to embroil his institution in another row over public health.

On the question of the legal supremo's personal style, several observers have made critical comparisons with Ehlermann, arguing that Dewoost lacks the imagination and flair of his predecessor.

“Ehlermann was the more brilliant legal mind,” argues one expert. “Most people felt that, under him, they had a much more exciting time, whereas Dewoost is much more conservative.”

But others say such criticisms are unfair. They point out that when Ehlermann headed up the legal service in the Seventies and Eighties, 'Europe' had a much lower public profile and officials felt more able to pursue controversial policy objectives without seeing their exploits reported in the following day's newspapers.

“People never wrote about what the legal service was doing in my day,” says one of the Commission's most senior legal experts from the Ehlermann era, adding that nobody cared in the Sixties and Seventies when the ECJ was busy churning out judgements which would have a profound effect on the way Europeans lived their lives. “Now you have a case of a pregnant woman and it fills the papers,” he adds.

Other observers believe that the Commission has a head of the legal service who is more in tune with the modest 'do less, but better' approach of Santer, in contrast to the 'imperial' heyday of Delors, the great European visionary.

“The Commission is on the way to becoming a secretariat and the head of its legal service is not going to be more royalist than the Santer king,” explains one.

BIO