Kohl’s ‘slow boat’ remark rings alarm bells with Conservatives

Date: 08/02/1996

By Geoff Meade

PRE-MATCH nerves are rattling the UK's Conservative government.

Any pronouncement on the forthcoming Intergovernmental Conference by any of Europe's leaders so soon before its launch at the end of next month triggers a whiplash public response from senior Conservative party members anxious to have the last word and keep the Eurosceptics in check.

Thus it was that German Chancellor Helmut Kohl's address in Leuven, Belgium, last week made headlines in the UK newspapers for three days while it was virtually ignored in the rest of the EU.

But then, Kohl did repeat his old chestnut about how the slowest boat in the EU convoy must not be allowed to hold up the rest of the fleet, a dig at UK reticence over integration which never fails to prompt an indignant response.

Kohl also took up an old Mitterrand theme, warning that integration was a “question of war and peace”, with an increased risk of conflict unless the EU drew even closer together. While the rest of Europe paid scant attention to this remark, it sparked outrage in the UK.

Not all of the reaction to Kohl's remarks was negative, however. Conservative MP Hugh Dykes, leader of the pro-European Movement, said: “The sceptics, with their usual melodrama, are surely getting it wrong. Chancellor Kohl was putting forward strong anti-war points. The reason the Community was set up in the first place was to put an end to repeated wars in Europe.”