Rules are rules – even for a party

Date: 13/03/1997

IF I invited 15 of you to join my birthday party celebrations in Rome, and then announced that first I wanted a private word with you the day before in Brussels, you would think I was mad.

You would suggest, and logic would be on your side, that it would be much more sensible for us all to meet in one or other of those two places, so that we could have our private chat and then put on our glad rags and begin the party.

I'm sorry, I would say, but my birthday party simply has to take place in Rome. After all, it is where I was born, 40 years ago.

Very well then, you would reply, let us all go to Rome a day earlier than planned and have our private chat there.

But this is not possible.

I know it is not possible because I have questioned Council of Ministers officials about the fact that there is a formal foreign ministers' meeting scheduled for 24 March in Brussels and a formal birthday party - and an informal meeting - of the very same foreign ministers in Rome on 25 March.

“Ha ha ha,” said the officials. “Very witty. A formal foreign ministers' meeting somewhere other than Brussels? That's very good, that is. I must remember that one. Where do these ideas come from? Whatever next? Ha ha ha.”

Time and motion study experts may bang their heads against brick walls in frustration. But it is, apparently, simply not possible to contemplate the idea that 15 government ministers who all have to be together in one European capital city on one day and in another European capital city the next day might do themselves and everyone else a favour by harmonising, geography-wise.

A European Commission diary note raised hope of sanity earlier this week. It bracketed the two events together, suggesting foreign ministers would be in Rome for a day of debate on the former Yugoslavia, Albania, the Middle East and Turkey, and then for a knees-up the next day to commemorate the birth of the Treaty of Rome.

Very sensible, we all said. It's the obvious answer.

But then a diary of Council dates confirmed what we all knew would turn out to be the case - that everyone would be chasing across Europe the week after next to fulfil the non-convergence criteria which are enshrined in the very treaty which is the subject of all the jollifications.

Brussels, you see, shall be the seat of the Council of Ministers. It absolutely must, it has to be, because that is what the founding fathers decreed in that document signed 40 years ago this month.

Unfortunately, they left out the clause that states: “In the event of a clash of dates, such as a future anniversary of this treaty hereinunder signed by the member states, (assuming that the aims set out within the said treaty are achieved, preserved and maintained for so long a time as to create the circumstances in which anniversary celebrations are deemed appropriate), decisions on meeting places shall be taken in such a manner as to give full regard to the requirements of common sense and good housekeeping for the general convenience of all concerned, without consideration of petty bureaucratic geographical requirements which may give rise to anomalous conjunctions of time and location.”

It is now clear that the founding fathers and the original six signatories to the Treaty of Rome made a fundamental error when they decided to drop that passage.

Whatever else it has done, and it has done a lot, the treaty has spawned Euro-jobs and, with them, Euro-bureaucracy.

It is ironic that in the current intergovernmental talks on Maastricht II, otherwise known as Rome III or Amsterdam I, there is much debate about the need for an employment chapter. It is ironic because the original treaty did as much as could be expected of any treaty to create jobs.

And these days, the people in the very jobs the Treaty of Rome created turn to the Treaty of Rome itself to defend their case in favour of the merry-go-round.

“I'm sorry,” they say, when you suggest that it would be a very fine idea for the Council of Ministers to decamp to Rome just for once, just to make life simpler. “I'm really very sorry, but rules are rules.”

And they wave the jolly old Treaty of Rome, whose birthday we will all celebrate only if we can manage to attend the Council meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels first and still find time to hop on a plane to get to Rome before the last canapés have been wolfed down and the last champagne despatched by the very people whose livelihoods and futures were effectively secured by the founding fathers all those years ago.

“Can't you just break the rules for once?” I plead, adding for good measure: “It is what the founding fathers would have wanted.”

A head shakes. Tongues make tut-tutting noises.

You see, explains officialdom, what we have here is a formal Council of Ministers' meeting. If it was informal, we could help you. In fact, we would be delighted to do so. We could go anywhere you want, actually, as long as we remained on territory encompassed by the Treaty of Rome, as amended by subsequent accession. That gives us a choice of beauty spots in 15 nations depending, obviously, on whose presidency it is at the relevant moment.

But the real sticking point, says officialdom with a sympathetic look in its eyes, is that what we have here is a formal meeting. And we can't just go swanning off to Rome or some such exotic place at the drop of a chapeau, can we, trampling all over the provisions of the very treaty we so willingly want to salute? That would be hypocrisy.

No, as long as we are talking formal, we are talking Brussels. It's all there, in black and white.

So there you have it. Prepare for a frantic exodus from the Justus Lipsius building on Monday night, 24 March, and a frantic scramble to the airport because we have a party to attend in another place.

This, I am sure, is not the kind of freedom of movement the Treaty of Rome was designed to uphold.

But happy birthday, treaty, and congratulations on a unique achievement: what other creation on earth was already six at the time of its birth, and still only 15 at the age of 40?