Shocking tactics at College

Date: 03/09/1998

Euro-watchers have Mercosur to thank for lifting the veil on a common practice among the EU's College of Commissioners.

It is an open secret that those supposedly collegiate fellows, who, when taking office, swear an oath always to act in the interests of Europe and never in those of their member state or themselves, often brief their domestic journalists after key votes of the full Commission.

After an acrimonious debate at a July meeting of the Commission over whether to create a free-trade zone between the EU and the South American trading bloc, this practice was blown wide open.

Following the meeting, the Commissioner responsible for the negotiations, Manuel Marín, held a press conference which he had to cut short to “rush off” and catch a plane. In fact, he was rushing off to brief assembled Spanish journalists secretly before leaving.

Meanwhile, Yves-Thibault de Silguy, the French Economics Commissioner, was giving French journalists details of a deal which he referred to as “a time bomb under the Common Agricultural Policy”. He warned that it could cost as much as 11 billion ecu in compensation for farmers.

Marín, who had left Brussels by this time, had De Silguy's remarks read to him off the French news agency wires.

Fuming, the Commissioner called the Agence France Press agency and declared, on the record: “It is shocking and deplorable that a member of the College should criticise a decision that was taken by a large majority in this way.”

Coming up with these compensation figures was, he claimed, “alarmist”.