Smooth operator

Date: 20/03/1997

GERMAN unification was undoubtedly fashioned by Chancellor Helmut Kohl. But the Union's clear support for the historic venture owed much to the behind-the-scenes efforts of the European Commission's Deputy Secretary-General Carlo Trojan.

His contribution is still acknowledged in Bonn. Just ten days ago, Germany's European Affairs Minister Werner Hoyer pointedly paid tribute to Trojan's wide service in the EU cause at a meeting of Intergovernmental Conference negotiators.

With obvious support from Bonn, the 55-year-old Dutchman is now emerging as a leading contender to take over the post of Commission secretary-general when present incumbent David Williamson stands down.

Trojan has been Williamson's number two for the past decade and his fingerprints can be detected on a number of crucial Commission initiatives over the years.

His reputation as a 'doer' and 'fixer' was initially secured by his involvement in German unification seven years ago. As head of the special ad hoc task force established by the then Commission President Jacques Delors, Trojan pushed through a 3-billion-ecu EU package to ease the painful transition from Communism to capitalism in record time.

“Carlo was ferociously in favour of giving Germany the funds. But there were many who were opposed since they believed that the Union was already bearing heavy enough costs. He was a key man in steering the package through both the Commission and the Council of Ministers,” recalls one colleague.

The task involved a hectic seven months of regular travel to Germany, much political manoeuvring and diligent line-by-line combing through piles of legal texts. This demonstration of Trojan's energy and abilities consolidated the high regard in which he was held by Delors and marked him out as a leading candidate for future troubleshooting roles.

A few years later, Trojan's skills were again pressed into service to piece together a second EU-funded package to build bridges in another divided community: Northern Ireland.

The funds were more modest - 300 million ecu - but the task no less politically sensitive, and Delors selected Trojan to take advantage of the opportunity offered by the cease-fire to draw up a list of peace and reconciliation programmes the Union could support by the time of the December 1994 Essen European summit.

“He went out of his way to talk to all sorts of grass-roots and socio-political groups. He was very aware that it was not a question of Brussels telling Northern Ireland what was needed, but of listening to what the people of the province had to say. He consciously promoted an open-door policy,” explains one official.

The exercise took Trojan from the front room of a modest house on Belfast's peace line, where he supped a mug of tea and ate ham sandwiches, to the glamour of a major investment conference where he shared the platform with UK Premier John Major and the late US Commerce Secretary Ron Brown.

With his Dutch/Italian background, the Commission's number two was able to deflect any unwarranted suspicion of religious bias by dryly pointing out that he was a true combination of the orange and the green.

But his interest in Northern Ireland was no nine-day wonder. Trojan is the EU's representative on the board of the International Fund for Ireland and as chef de cabinet to the then Competition Commissioner Frans Andriessen in the early Eighties, he was one of the strongest supporters of the newly created Commission office in Belfast.

Over the years, Trojan has also helped shape the multi-annual EU financing package which runs up to 1999 and he is now heavily involved in the wide-ranging budgetary exercise to determine how the Union's policies should be financed in the early years of the next century.

“He enjoys coming in at the beginning of a particular programme, getting it up and running, and then leaving it to others to implement,” says one colleague.

The special one-off projects he undertakes (which have included organising two G7 information technology summits in Brussels and South Africa recently) are in addition to the deputy secretary-general's regular role of representing the Commission at the weekly Committee of permanent representatives (Coreper) meetings of EU ambassadors, where he has special responsibility for following the Finance and General Affairs Councils.

“Having gone to the Coreper and Council meetings for almost ten years, he is virtually the doyen of the group. Coreper is very much a club and Carlo is certainly a leading member,” explains one official.

As he has gradually outlasted a succession of Union ambassadors, Trojan has developed a fine line in elegant farewell speeches to the senior diplomats with whom he has jousted over the years. “He has a strong sense of observation of how people act and behave, and this comes through in those speeches,” says one ringside spectator.

Part of Trojan's success is due to his sensitive political antennae and global view of the EU jigsaw. “He is a very smooth operator - one of the smoothest I know - and he is extremely discreet. He can help you around difficult problems since he knows the game so very well and has a good political feel for what is possible and feasible,” says one former government minister.

A regular Coreper observer agrees. “He may lack human warmth, but he knows his dossiers. His eyes and ears are everywhere. When something crops up which you do not know about, he is already aware of it. He is at the centre of a whole network.”

Not all Trojan's Commission colleagues would endorse such views and some take offence at his somewhat abrasive style. But his supporters say he uses it to get results.

“He hates meetings that go on for longer than an hour and tends to guillotine them. In getting things done in this bureaucracy, you sometimes have to cut corners and Trojan recognises that. The secret of his success is that he forges ahead,” says one.

Others suggest, not entirely in jest, that Trojan likes to start meetings by reading out the conclusions, then browbeats colleagues by accusing them of being bureaucratic if they show dissent.

But one who has known him for years counters: “I have always found him genuinely helpful, and very open and prepared to listen, even though he has a reputation for being tough and stubborn. He does not come to something new with preconceived ideas. His methods may be rough, but his political judgement is sound.”

Although Trojan's experience of the Commission goes back to 1973, it was confined to Commissioners' cabinets until he became deputy secretary-general in October 1987 and finally acquired the status of a fully fledged fonctionnaire. Before his horizons expanded, his whole 20-year career had revolved almost entirely around agriculture.

However, the experience was not as narrow as it might superficially appear. In the early Eighties, agriculture was the Union policy and accounted for over two-thirds of the annual budget. In addition, Trojan's Commissioner - Andriessen - was prepared to delegate.

“Trojan thrived and enjoyed the wheeling and dealing. Agriculture was the portfolio, but it provided the schooling for negotiating in other areas,” says one colleague.

Much has been made of Trojan's cosmopolitan background: a Dutch national born in Italy, with a Danish wife. In addition to his native Dutch, he is perfectly at ease in Italian, English, French and German and has enough Danish to converse with his in-laws.

Close colleagues testify to a dry, if direct, sense of humour, and behind the two-piece suit is a keen sportsman who enjoys swimming and the occasional game of tennis. He also likes to escape from the Brussels hothouse when he can to take it easy at his holiday home in France.

He has even perfected the art of relaxing during endless meetings. “Whenever Coreper falls into long procedural debates, he ostensibly reads his newspaper, and when waiting around at summits he likes to make up a bridge four,” reveals one close colleague.

The secretary-general's job, with its emphasis on the day-to-day nuts and bolts of running a huge organisation, would be very different from Trojan's current role as a key member of the Commission's strike force in the Council of Ministers. But, after handling the screening exercise of Commission personnel in the Eighties, Trojan is well versed in much of the necessary minutiae and would, colleagues suspect, relish the challenge of a change of role.