Tireless radical

Date: 03/10/1996

BORN 48 years ago in a town called Bra, Emma Bonino has been metaphorically burning hers ever since.

Little known outside Italy before her last-minute call-up to join the new European Commission team which took office in 1995, the diminutive Bonino has carved out quite a profile for herself, despite having three ostensibly less-than-glamorous portfolios to work with.

Ever the action woman, Bonino's name now conjures up images in most people's minds of a lone figure being winched on to a Spanish fishing vessel or tearing along African dust tracks dressed in combat fatigues.

So far, the Fisheries, Humanitarian Aid and Consumer Affairs Commissioner has succeeded in getting things moving without rubbing too many people up the wrong way.

A notable exception is the former Canadian Fisheries Minister Brian Tobin. The two had a very public and less than diplomatic dispute within weeks of Bonino joining the Commission, after she accused the Canadians of “piracy” following their arrest of the Spanish trawler Estai.

The Commissioner faces the prospect of another bruising battle over fisheries later this month when ministers meet to discuss her controversial plan for deep cuts in the EU's fishing fleet.

But while press coverage of Bonino's activities tends to focus on her bold approach to such conflicts, inside the Commission she is best known for her apparently limitless enthusiasm for work.

“She works 24 hours a day and if the day had 28 hours, she would use all of them,” says one close collaborator.

Yet even those in her entourage with interests outside work do not appear to resent her single-minded commitment.

“She might call me at home at midnight or at seven o'clock in the morning, but it did not bother me because I had her complete and full trust from day one. She is very kind and involved in what she does, and treats everybody as equals,” explains the Commissioner's former spokesman Marco Zatterin.

Known for her casual dress and direct style, Bonino is quite happy to spend as long trying to talk the average citizen round to her way of thinking as she does heads of state.

Nor does she have any hesitation about speaking her mind. Aid organisations in Haiti are among those who have been on the receiving end of a dressing-down from the Commissioner, who scolded them for not saving money by sharing transport. She also ranks among the few senior politicians openly opposed to the prohibition of drugs.

Yet Bonino is neither insensitive, nor as hard as she might seem to some. Her staff remember how she was visibly moved by her first visit to a Kigali jail.

Coming from Italy's small Radical Party, Bonino is determined not to waste a single second of the unexpected opportunity presented to her by the political upheaval which swept Italy in autumn 1994, just as the then Luxembourg Premier Jacques Santer was putting his Commission team together.

The identity of Italy's second Commissioner remained uncertain until the very last minute, and when Bonino was finally chosen over Giorgio Napolitano, she was thousands of miles away on a campaign trip in New York. She had to fly hurriedly from the United States to Santer's first Senningen get-together, arriving late and even delaying the new Commission's first 'family photo'.

But nothing could spoil her moment of triumph. “This was the very first time a radical had taken public office, the crowning of 20 years of militant campaigning,” says a long-standing party colleague.

Professionally, the chance of five years at the centre of European decision-making was the perfect opportunity for the 'workaholic' Bonino.

From a personal point of view, she was less pleased - two stints as an MEP since 1979 had not made her over keen on Brussels.

One former British Euro MP still has fond memories of the immediate impression Bonino and her Italian colleague Marco Pannella made after entering the chamber 17 years ago. Their battle to shake up the Parliament's procedures blocked business for a year. “They ran rings round Simone Veil, who was Parliament president at the time,” he recalls.

Her nomination to the Commission by media magnate and then Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was not well received by Italy's political establishment.

Initially only awarded the consumer policy brief, the ever-outspoken Bonino was not shy in pointing out that one of the Union's founding member states could hardly be satisfied with a portfolio with an annual budget of just 20 million ecu. Aides claim it was not difficult to wrest humanitarian aid from the grasp of Spain's rather more nonchalant Manuel Marín.

With Norway's EU membership hanging in the balance, she wrote to Santer gently suggesting that if Oslo chose not to join the Union club, the president might like to reconsider the way he had divided up responsibilities.

Ideally, she wanted a new portfolio covering human rights issues. Santer's rather more measured response was to give her the fisheries dossier initially promised to Norway's Thorvald Stoltenberg.

Typically, she took the bull by the horns and after an honest performance at the European Parliament's confirmation hearings, raced to get up to speed in her new area of competence.

Then Tobin came along, offering her the perfect opportunity to raise public awareness of both Emma Bonino and the problems facing the EU's fishing industry.

An intelligent and diligent person, Bonino - unlike some of her colleagues - is not happy to rely on soundbites and briefing notes from her officials. If she does not know enough about a subject, she will send for the file and read it.

Her officials refer fondly to her 'team' and say she always takes advice from her advisers on the different options available before making a political judgement. “She is a good political sponge, able to soak up a lot of information,” says one.

Although Bonino's areas of responsibility are by no means light-hearted, there is plenty of laughter at her Cabinet's daily 9am meeting. Renowned for her anecdotes, she likes to regale staff with amusing stories of ministerial or Commission meetings. She has a sardonic sense of humour and a great sense of self-irony.

Being called upon to become a member of the political establishment clearly held no fears for Bonino.

“Fundamentally, she respects the rules. If she does not like the rules, she will try to change them. Being in the Commission is fine for someone who is a

pro-European federalist of the Spinelli school,” says an adviser.

Her supporters deny Bonino is in danger of compromising her principles, claiming she would be prepared to break collegiality on an issue she felt strongly enough about. An opponent of French nuclear testing in the South Pacific, she was, however, pragmatic enough to realise the futility of trying to stop Paris going ahead, preferring instead to secure assurances that it would sign up to the test ban treaty from 1996.

Born into a poor rural community in southern Piedmont, Bonino stumbled into organised politics almost by accident.

While studying foreign languages and literature at university in Milan, the young Emma initially opted to devote her time to the more traditional pastimes of college students.

In the shadow of the 1974 referendum on divorce, she had a growing feeling that women were not in control of their own destiny and personal experience drove her into campaigning in favour of abortion.

Being arrested became a not-too-unusual part of her life as she campaigned on issues as wide-ranging as nuclear power, human rights and abortion.

It was in 1976 that Bonino took the plunge and contacted Radical Party supremo Pannella, rapidly finding herself elected to Italy's parliament. Work has dominated her life ever since.

So does Bonino ever sleep? One aide remembers asking for a rest during a hectic trip to the United Nations in New York. “Of course,” his boss replied. “See you in 15 minutes.” In August, while other Commissioners were sunning themselves on the beaches of Europe, Bonino undertook an exhausting trip around the Far East, Africa and Scandinavia, punctuated only by a brief visit to her mother.

For relaxation, Bonino will happily pull on her apron and entertain friends and colleagues with some of her pasta specialities, washed down with white wine.

One dinner guest, the former US President Jimmy Carter, turned up to Bonino's apartment early to give his security men time to check the place over, only to find his hostess in the shower.

It was a measure of her unpretentious approach to life and work that Bonino remained unperturbed by the whole episode.