Posted on 01/31/2005 2:09:35 PM PST by naturalman1975
NO wonder John Howard takes a swipe at the Europeans whenever he can. His latest outburst, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, is the latest shot in a war with the European Union that has been going on for nearly 30 years.
It began in 1977 when as a novice government minister he went to Brussels to take on the powerful members of what was then the European Economic Community. Prime minister Malcolm Fraser had been given a bad time by the Europeans during a visit to Brussels a few months earlier and was so outraged that he called a cabinet meeting and got an agreement to appoint a Department for Special Trade Negotiations, later changed to Representations. He appointed as the minister the brightest ministerial prospect at the time, John Winston Howard, who had been an immediate success as business and consumer affairs minister, his first portfolio.
I was working in the Australian embassy when Howard and his team of advisers arrived in late September 1977. His goal was to campaign in all the EEC capitals for recognition of Australia's demands for a fair trading deal with Europe.
Seasoned diplomats in the embassy were deeply upset by the implication that they weren't tough enough with the Europeans and that a team of heavies had to be sent from Australia to shake things up.
The Howard team flew into Brussels one Saturday morning -- as one diplomat put it -- like a posse of tough western gunmen, ready, in High Noon fashion, to fix this 'ere commission that was causing trade-loving Australia so much trouble.
Howard can never forget how he was treated in those days. European Commission heavies were scornful of these upstart, impolite Aussies. They were irritated by the tenacious Howard, a stranger to foreign diplomacy and its stuffy formalities. As one official told me: "He tended to push his foot in the door and to be a nuisance to the commission. We were somewhat alarmed at this Australian demonstration of tough-guy diplomacy and rough-neck bargaining."
Howard was reported to have "stamped his foot" at 11 o'clock one night in the corridor of the commission building, demanding to meet external relations commissioner Wilhelm Haferkamp. Howard denied foot stamping but he told me he was livid with the commission for trying to stall the Australians.
The background to this "war" is the way the Europeans ignored Australia's just demands for better access to Europe's markets and how damaging to Australian farmers were EU subsidies on farm exports. Our primary industries suffered heavy losses when the market in Britain, until then our leading export customer, was closed to us.
But Australia never understood the motive behind the Common Agricultural Policy, established to guarantee food supplies when memories of World WarII were still vivid. That was understandable and laudable. But the CAP grew into a social and political giant, swallowing up most of the EU budget, so that it could preserve rural life mainly in France and Germany.
Before leaving for Davos, Howard attacked the EU for restoring subsidised wheat exports. In Davos he added to his list of complaints EU failure to give poor, developing countries access to Europe's markets. He was almost a lone voice in rebuking the Europeans for their attacks on President George W.Bush's foreign policy.
But in many ways Howard is fighting a war that has long ended. As the EC delegation to Australia points out, the EU as a single market continues to be Australia's single most important economic partner. The EU is Australia's largest partner in terms of two-way trade in goods and two-way trade in services. It's the biggest investor in Australia and the second most important destination for Australian investment overseas.
When Howard went by train from Brussels to Luxembourg in 1977 to push Australia's trade case, he was accompanied by the senior official in his team, Philip Flood, and a second secretary in the Australian embassy, Alexander Downer. If only those commission officials had realised that one day Howard would be Prime Minister, Alexander Downer Foreign Minister and Flood secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Howard may well feel he has sound policy reasons for being critical of the EU. But it's just possible that if that tenacious, upstart Aussie had been treated better way back in 1977, he might not hold so many grudges against those Europeans today.
Vincent Matthews was first secretary (information) at the Australian embassy in Brussels from 1974 to 1978 and head of the Government Information Unit from 1978 to 1982.
Or maybe it's because those same, stuffy, pretentious, useless, EU bureaucrats and Euroweenies are still saying the same two-faced things.
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