Commission by compromise

JACQUES Delors is a tough act to follow - a visionary and intellectual who drove the EU forward on his own agenda and a master of the Brussels bureaucracy through his formidable chef de cabinet, Pascal Lamy, whose organisational tentacles were feared.

But Brussels had left the citizens of Europe behind, as the ratification of Maastricht showed. And the member governments wanted a change of style and pace more: humility and an ability to listen.

That's what they got in January last year in their new President of the Commission, Jacques Santer. A Luxembourger, schooled in the compromise, consensus politics of the Benelux countries, a politician, not an "enarque", a team player, Santer would work to fulfill the agenda set by Maastricht, not create a new one.

Above all they wanted a man who would listen to the member states. Jacques Santer cut his teeth in the EU's intergovernmental forum, the Council of Ministers, and believes the Commission's key role is as a facilitator for the member states.

Others, like Delors, see its role: quite differently - the guardian of the treaty, the Commission, constitutionally, has been given the sole right to initiate proposals. So initiate they did. And initiate. And initiate.

Santer's slogan - "Do less, but better" - is not a rallying call to die for but it is the slogan of our time.

But a willingness to listen to the member states and a determination to build consensus rather than lead from the front have their downside. Listening to the member states means listening to all of them, not just Britain.

If they have problems lifting an export ban, it's not for the Commission to ride roughshod over their feelings, as other might have done. "The chickens have come to roost," was how one senior official put it yesterday.

Born in May 1937 in Wasserbillig, the son of a policeman, Jacques Santer went on to study at the faculties of law in Luxembourg, Strasbourg and Paris and the Institut de Sciences Politiques in Paris.

He started his professional career in 1961 as a barrister at the Court of Appeal in Luxembourg but in 1963 was appointed as cabinet attache to the Minister for Labour and Social Security. He moved more directly into the political arena three years later when he took the job of parliamentary secretary of the Christian Social Party.

He went on successively to become secretary general of the party, its chairman and then leader and in the first of those roles in 1972 also took on his first cabinet job as State Secretary for Social and Cultural Affairs.

SANTER is "European Man" par excellence. He served as an MEP, and was a vice president of the Parliament from 1975 to 1977. Later he would chair the Union's Council as a government leader, and yet later lead the Commission.

At home he served as an alderman in the City of Luxembourg and then in 1979 rejoined the government as Minister or Finance, Labour and Social Security, a post he served in until he became prime minister in 1984.

With Luxembourg in the presidency of the EU, Mr Santer chaired the European summit in his capital in 1985 and played a key role in brokering the negotiations over the Single European Act. In 1987 he became president of the European People's Party, the broad grouping: that brings together Christian Democrats and conservatives from throughout the continent.

The election in June 1989 saw him top the poll at home and he retained his job as prime minister. It was a key period for Europe with the collapse of the former communist states providing new challenges.

And at the helm were a group of like minded leaders who had been in power since early in the decade and knew and trusted each other - Helmut Kohl, Francois Mitterrand Wilfried Martens in Belgium, Ruud Lubbers in the Netherlands, and Jacques Santer. Their closeness contributed to the feeling that the ambitious project of economic and monetary union was possible.

And, once again, Luxembourg, in the run up to Maastricht, took its turn at the presidency, with Jacques Santer at the helm in the key preparatory discussions.

Married with two sons, he is by all accounts a warm and gregarious man with a common touch. He enjoys walking and swimming and his fondness for a game of belotte - a French form of poker - with friends in Luxembourg cafes was blamed for his initial reluctance to take the Commission job.

He is, as Ireland's Commissioner, Padraig Flynn, points out, a man who has successfully pressed the flesh in political campaigns and so, unlike many Commissioners, including his predecessor, understands the fears of the citizen in the street.

But his early press in the Commission was not good. Seen as uninspiring, not an intellectual, and a lightweight second choice after his friend, the Belgian Prime Minister, Mr Jean Luc Dehaeme, was vetoed by the British Prime Minister, Mr Major, there were hints that he also might have too much of a fondness for the Luxembourg Pinot grape.

IN retrospect that unflattering perspective was the result of unfair comparisons with Jacques Delors. The Commission's new boss was quick to show his mettle with a distribution of portfolios which reflected considerable political skills and a willingness to take tough decisions - his facing down of the demands of the British Commissioner Sir Leon Brittain, pleasantly surprised all but Sir Leon.

Santer's success in dispelling some early misapprehensions are attributable to his appointment as his chef de cabinet of fellow Luxembourger, Jim Cloos, a Commission veteran who as a Luxembourg diplomat played a key role in the Maastricht negotiations. His pragmatic and more relaxed style marked a profound change from Lamy. The watchword was now teamwork.

But Cloos's approach is definitely - hands on. Santer insisted that as president he should share day to day responsibility with other commissioners for both the Inter Governmental Conference (IGC) on the reform of the EU treaties and planning for the single currency. Cloos drafted the Commission submission to the former.

Santer's reluctance to appear autocratic led him to move too late - against the publishing ventures of the Danish Commissioner, Ritt Bjerregaard. By the time he got his act together her descriptions of Commission meetings were already in print and unsupressable.

Loose talk by the British Commissioner, Neil Kinnock, expressing scepticism about monetary union, the publication of a book on the same theme by a senior British Commission official, Bernard Connolly, The Rotten heart of Europe, and the abuse by the German Commissioner, Martin Bangemann, of his right to earn money on the side - Bangemann accepted a hefty fee for speaking at an EU funded seminar - all gave an impression last year of a Commission in disarray.

The Commission has since got its acts together - in public at least.

At the Madrid summit dinner in December Santer was rapped on the knuckles by Germany's Chancellor Helmut Kohl over Commissioners' lack of discipline. Unabashed, Mr Santer, is reported to have reminded him that it is the member states who appoint commissioners. Would Dr Kohl like to support proposals to give the President the right to hire and fire Commissioners?

On BSE, although willing publicly to warn the British their tactics are counterprodcutive and that they, not the EU, are the authors of their misfortune, he has supported the Agriculture Commissioner, Franz Fischler's determination to show Britain that the Commission can be its ally in getting the ban lifted.

Perhaps most disappointing to Santer was the lukewarm response to his idea of a Confidence Pact for Jobs, seen in Brussels as rather old wine in new bottles, a repackaging of Delor's White Paper themes with a Chateau Santer label.

It was supposed to be a combination of getting the social partners together to pledge pay restraint and flexibility - not a success - and attempts to direct savings from the farm budget into Trans European Networks and research - likely to be scuppered by the demands placed on the budget by the BSE crisis.

But Santer's real test is yet to come - more than any other single issue the formulation of a budget for the Union and brokering agreement on it, thrusts the Commission President centre stage and puts his diplomatic skills to the test. The next budget runs from 1999, but by the end of next year "Santer I", as it will be known, will have to be in the pipeline.

"I don't set much store by dreams and visions, just concrete results," he has said. And so he will be judged.