Santer pays a flying visit

Date: 12/09/1996

Commission President Jacques Santer was said to be not at all pleased at the decision to hold a special EU summit on 5 October, just hours after his long-planned, long-awaited, highly-prestigious meeting in Tokyo with the emperor of Japan - and half a world away.

Such audiences are granted only rarely, and Santer feared he would have to miss this one.

But thanks to the miracle of modern air travel - and a little flight shuffling - Santer will make it to Dublin in time for what some government ministers believe will be a largely pointless exercise in navel gazing over the IGC.

Santer cannot kick up too much of a fuss though - he was the one who insisted that the IGC process desperately needed a kick-start, and 5 October is the only date in the near future on which foreign ministers meeting in Tralee were able to agree.