EU’s traffic controller

Date: 06/06/1996

IF Neil Kinnock wins a mandate to open negotiations with Washington over a common aviation area - as looks increasingly possible - he may finally win just a little bit of respect from his critics.

Since taking over as Transport Commissioner in January last year, the 54-year-old Welshman has injected political zest into a portfolio which had been lulled to sleep by his two Spanish predecessors.

Under Kinnock, the Commission is at last attempting to get serious about vetting subsidies to state airlines and moving freight traffic off Europe's congested roads and on to the railways.

Compared to several other Commissioners, Kinnock is a success story in Brussels. Yet this will come as a shock to many of the British voters who rejected him as prime minister twice, in 1987 and 1992.

Criticising him is the easiest thing in the world to do. For nine years, the UK tabloid newspapers did not have a good word to say about him. But even they were not as hard on him as he has been on himself.

In a depressed state following the April 1992 election defeat at the hands of John Major, Kinnock called himself a “personal and political failure” who appeared to voters to be “shallow, sharp-tempered, lacking in intelligence and intellect - a weak man”.

They (and he) were only content to look at his record superficially - Labour Party leader from 1983-92, guiding the party through two crushing electoral defeats. The message from the opinion polls said he was liked but not respected - just as Major is today.

Kinnock fitted the English stereotype of a Welshman: he smiled too much, he was too emotional, he played rugby and he sang with gusto.

His amiable 'man-of-the-people' style simply reinforced this impression - this, after all, is the man who recently revealed in an issue of the Commission's internal newsletter that he wanted to be remembered as “a terrific pace bowler, as a wonderful outside half with a full head of hair”.

His opponents dubbed him the “eternal student” - forever protesting from the sidelines and never in a position of power.

Finding Kinnock's plus points requires a bit of investigation, but is worth the effort.

When he took over the Labour Party in 1983, it had just suffered its worst ever electoral defeat after years of fierce left-right infighting. The party's published programme for government had been described by one of its authors as the “longest suicide note in history”.

It advocated a round of nationalisations with bankrupting compensation to be paid to shareholders, a massive devaluation of the pound and withdrawal from the then European Community.

Kinnock took over the party reins as a left-winger, yet one who was considered a traitor by his former political soulmates for failing to back leftist Tony Benn as deputy leader in 1981. As leader, Kinnock fought the hard-left of the party through a combination of persuasion and tyranny. His reputation as a weak man was not shared by the left. The reforms he put in place are the main reason why current leader Tony Blair looks set to sweep into power next year, barring a massive turn-around in the polls.

Nevertheless, when he lost the 1992 election, Kinnock took all the blame. He withdrew from the public gaze and alarmed many with a 10-kilo loss in weight. His black mood only lifted when his wife Glenys became a candidate for the European Parliament in May 1993. Within six weeks, Major agreed to make him the UK's second Commissioner - a suggestion that had been vetoed only a year earlier by right-wingers in the Conservative cabinet.

Arriving in Brussels at the same time as his wife, Kinnock's rehabilitation began. Officials at DGVII, the Directorate-General for transport, were surprised at how well-briefed he was on their key areas of responsibility and relieved to discover that he would bring some much-needed political clout to road, rail, sea and aviation issues.

The zeal of the convert - he had opposed the UK's membership of the European Economic Community in 1973 - could easily be undermined by the EU's similarity to an excruciating 15-sided chess game. But so far, Kinnock has not become disillusioned with the Union.

“He was originally an anti-marketeer but that is because it was just a market,” says a friend, “and also because he was worried about the effects on Wales as a peripheral area. As patterns changed and he had more contact with people in the EU, he could see there were benefits.”

Kinnock was courted for a job in the last Labour government in 1974-79 but, because of his opposition to many of its policies, he declined. As a result, he has spent all his adult life in opposition and only now has he been given the chance to prove himself in administration.

“He is happy here because he is now in a position of real action and can make policy,” says one of his team.

This he has done. When the Spanish government asked permission to inject 860 million ecu into its all-but bankrupt airline, Iberia, Kinnock drove the hardest bargain he could legally muster.

A year after filing the request, Iberia was allowed 545 million ecu but was forced to sell stakes in three Latin American companies which could only be bought back two years later without subsidy and with the help of a private-sector partner.

Kinnock won the best deal possible under the law - but it was never going to look that way back in London. It was always going to be interpreted as though he had crumbled under political pressure.

Yet, in reality, Kinnock is taking a tough line in the run-up to full liberalisation of European civil aviation in 1997 - the so-called 'third package'. It is this, rather than any ideological liberalism, that is driving him to investigate whether Greece's Olympic Airways or Air France violated the terms of the subsidies they were granted in 1994.

“The third package was agreed in 1992,” says an aide. “It is done and now it is a question of enforcing the rules and making sure that, through the use of state aid, companies are not undermining the effects of the third package.”

When he took office, Kinnock was also landed with the task of convincing highly sceptical transport ministers that he should be given the power to negotiate a civil aviation agreement for all of them with the US.

Six had already gone ahead and signed bilateral deals with Washington against the advice of the Commission. Kinnock was determined to win them over to a joint mandate - and his persistence finally appears to be paying off.

“A year ago, we put the mandate on the table,” says a colleague, “and even internally, people said they would not even discuss it. But now we have a clear majority of member states who are prepared to talk about the details of it, and not just the principle.”

More surprising for Kinnock-observers is his conversion to liberalisation of the railways - still a matter of heresy for many in UK and French politics. But this has been the result more of an acceptance of the facts of life than a case of falling off his horse on the road to Damascus. More and more freight is travelling by road rather than rail. Europe's roads are becoming clogged with lorries and the environment is suffering.

“He realises that business as usual is not an option,” says an aide. “If we follow business as usual, with national railway systems and no competition, they will die.”

In the college of Commissioners, the solidarity of the three responsible for competition policy - Kinnock, Karel Van Miert and Franz Fischler - never cracks. Personally, he gets on best with Van Miert, Budget Commissioner Erkki Liikanen and Environment Commissioner Ritt Bjerregaard.

But he also has a good relationship with the other UK Commissioner, Sir Leon Brittan, a fact which has surprised some given that the two men come from opposite ends of the political divide.

Colleagues believe Kinnock's down-to-earth style has helped him build bridges within the institution.

“He has faults, like everyone, but he is straightforward,” says a Cabinet member. “He doesn't play at being God.”

However, when he played at soothsaying - telling a private meeting that the 1999 target date for a single currency was likely to be missed - he got Commission President Jacques Santer's back up.

When Santer responded by appearing to call Kinnock weak in public, he was furious. Waiting for that famous temper to crack is proving an exciting game.