Kompromat

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Next morning, Jeremy Hartley arrived in good time at the Justus Lipsius Building on the Brussels Rond Point Schuman, home of the European Council, the place where the EU’s key legislative decisions taken.

Nancy Ginsberg, the BBC’s chief political correspondent, thrust a microphone at him as he strode into the huge, red-granite building, accompanied by Sir Luke Threadgold.

‘Is a bad deal better than no deal, Prime Minister?’ she shouted.

Hartley gave her a jaunty thumbs up. ‘It’s going to be a good day for Britain. A good day for Europe too!’

Arne Jacobsen, the Danish prime minister, then serving as the president of the European Council, decided it was time to start. It was already well past 10:00a.m., the official time for kick-off that day.

Sitting at one end of the huge, lozenge-shaped Council table, he strained his eyes to see who was present and who was not. Back in the good old days, there had been just the six founding fathers of what was then the European Economic Community. Now there were twenty-eight members of the Community’s successor in title: the European Union. The Council table had had to be continually expanded to accommodate the arrival of the new Member States. In its latest configuration, it seemed to be almost as long as a football pitch.

Arne Jacobsen noted that the president of the Commission, Michael O’Rourke, was already in his seat down the far end of the room. Other delegations were making their way to their allotted places at the table. The room was filling up.

Jacobsen turned to Eloise Pomade, the senior official in the Council’s secretariat, who sat on his immediate right. She had held the job almost a decade, weathering crisis after crisis. Somehow the EU survived them all. But this Brexit business, she reflected, was in a category of its own.

‘Is the German delegation here yet?’ Jacobsen asked.

‘The German delegation is certainly here. I’ve seen the German ambassador a moment ago. But I don’t think Mrs Brun has arrived yet.’

She picked up a pair of opera glasses and scanned the room. ‘No, she’s not here.’

Jacobsen waited another ten minutes but the chancellor still didn’t arrive. In the end, even in the absence of Chancellor Brun, he decided to open the meeting.

‘Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome. I would like to thank you all for coming here at short notice. Some of you may indeed wonder why you are here at all. You may believe that when, earlier this year, we concluded our renegotiation package with the UK, the European Council had, as it were, said the last word. That was our final offer.

‘And of course I completely understand if that is the view you take. Nevertheless, I too, as Chairman of the Council, must take my responsibilities seriously. It has not escaped my notice, and it will certainly not have escaped yours, that Europe today is in the midst of great turmoil. I would venture to state that even the continued existence of the European Union is under threat from the rise of anti-EU populist movements. We cannot discount the possibility of what I may call the “domino effect”. What happens in Britain next month may affect what happens in France, in the Netherlands, in Germany, and even – if this is not too fanciful – in the United States of America, where as we all know the presidential campaign has already begun.

‘That is why I have asked the president of the Commission to make one last effort to find a solution to the British problem, a solution which should ensure that the outcome of the Referendum can be seen as a confirmation, not a rejection, of our common European destiny.’

‘Hear, hear!’

Jeremy Hartley banged the table to indicate his approval. The other heads of state or government joined in the applause.

Arne Jacobsen smiled. He was not on the whole an eloquent man. But he had put a bit of effort into that speech and he was pleased by the reaction.

After that, as was usual, the European Commission led off the discussion.

Michael O’Rourke began by acknowledging the efforts of all those present in the room to avert the looming train wreck.

‘Frankly,’ he confessed, ‘if we had known a few months ago what we know today, we would have made this one last effort, as Mr Jacobsen called it, a good deal sooner. And I would say to the British delegation through you, Mr Chairman, that we should have realized right from the start that the way to deal with this problem of excessive migration was not through some special arrangements with the United Kingdom, but on the contrary through a strong and durable European solution. I would like to say now how grateful the Commission is to all the Member States, and of course to the Council secretariat, for the efforts made to move this matter forward to a successful conclusion.’

Michael O’Rourke looked up from his notes to address the chairman at the far end of the table. ‘Would it help, Mr Chairman, if I read out the text of our proposal slowly? I am not sure the document under discussion is yet available in all the official languages, so it may be helpful also to be able to listen to the interpreters.’

‘Go ahead, Mr President,’ Arne Jacobsen instructed.

Michael O’ Rourke was a large man with a booming voice. Like so many of his countrymen, he had a way with words.

He could even make the dull, procedural prose which he had in front of him that morning sound more than halfway interesting.

‘This is the text the Commission is proposing,’ he began:

Michael O’Rourke paused, looked up from his papers and gazed about the room.

‘That’s it, Mr Chairman,’ he said.

Jeremy Hartley had, of course, heard the text the previous day. He’d had a chance to study it in detail. He admired its simplicity and the economy of words, so unlike most EU documents. He could live with it. More than that, he was ready to welcome it with open arms.

Best say so straightaway, he thought. That was always the best tactic. Set the tone of the debate. Make his view clear.

‘I am very grateful to you, Mr President, as Chair of the Council,’ he said to Arne Jacobsen: ‘And of course to the Commission,’ here he gestured to Michael O’Rourke, ‘for all the hard work the community institutions and the Member States have put in, so that we can today find a solution to what up till now has been an intractable problem.

‘What is interesting to me,’ he continued, ‘is that what seemed in the first instance to be a purely British problem turns out in the end to be a European problem and therefore one that is capable of a European solution.

‘I can confirm today that the United Kingdom government welcomes the text that the Commission has put forward, and sincerely hopes that it may be adopted unanimously by the Council this morning.’

The applause which followed Hartley’s brief intervention was more than polite. It was heartfelt.

It really was a different ball game now, they all thought, compared to what it had been just a few months ago. Even countries like Poland and Romania, whose workers travelled in tens of thousands each year in search of jobs in the more affluent parts of the European Union, could see the value of agreed language, which in the end permitted them to take their own decisions about what was right for their country. And if this text really did help to stop the imminent disintegration of the EU, it was surely worth swallowing any objections they might have.

One by one, the heads of State and government took the floor to express their views. Some of them made long speeches; some of them made short speeches, but none of them, not one, took exception to the text the Commission had circulated.

The prime minister of Hungary, Lazlo Ferenczy, was positively ecstatic, which was not surprising given that his country was busy erecting huge fences, topped with razor-sharp wire, along the length of its Eastern border.

‘It is high time we took this step,’ he urged. ‘My country supports the Commission’s proposal whole-heartedly.’

The president of France, Jacques Petit, was more nuanced. ‘France will not object to the text,’ he said. ‘The circumstances are indeed very special. But we would suggest the addition of one line at the end, namely that Member States which decide to introduce unilateral measures to control migration should nevertheless report such measures to the Commission.’

Arne Jacobsen decided to give the French president all the help he could. It was in any case, as far as he could see, a fairly harmless proposal. No one was suggesting that the Commission should actually forbid or try to subvert these unilateral measures.

‘If I hear no objection, I propose we accept the amendment as proposed by the president of France.’ He banged his gavel on the table before anyone had a chance to ask for the floor. ‘So agreed.’

The last speaker had just finished when there was a sudden commotion at the far end of the room.

‘Ah! I see the German chancellor has arrived,’ Arne Jacobsen said. ‘Shall we break for five minutes to give Mrs Brun the chance to catch up?’

The five-minute break stretched to ten; ten minutes stretched to fifteen. What on earth was happening, Hartley wondered? He was worried. It looked as though there had been a cock-up somewhere along the line.

‘I thought the Commission had squared this text in advance with the Germans,’ he commented acidly to Sir Luke Threadgold.

‘I did too,’ Threadgold replied. ‘The German ambassador definitely gave it his okay.’

‘Well, his okay doesn’t count unless Brun’s on board too,’ Hartley snapped. He could see that members of the German delegation were clustered round the chancellor in a corner of the room. The German ambassador, Herr Otto von Wiensdorf, a huge white-haired man who was the doyen d’âge among delegates, seemed to be almost shouting at her.

‘This is the only solution, Chancellor,’ he urged. ‘We must agree to it, not block it. And it is in Germany’s interest also. We too need this emergency brake. We cannot tolerate the present situation. Europe itself is at risk!’

When Arne Jacobsen called the resumed meeting to order, he gave the German chancellor the floor straightway,

‘I would like to apologize, chairman, for arriving late at the meeting this morning,’ Helga Brun began. ‘I have to admit that I only saw the interesting text circulated by the Commission as I was leaving Berlin to come to Brussels. I had to take the time necessary to consult colleagues and officials.’

She paused and took a sip of water from the glass in front of her.

‘I am sorry to say, Chairman, that my government finds the Commission’s proposal totally unacceptable. This great European Union of ours is founded on four basic freedoms: the freedom of movement of goods, people, services and capital over borders. My government is not prepared to see those freedoms weakened or diminished in any way.

‘So I much regret that I cannot give any comfort today to our British colleagues by agreeing that there is a European solution to their problem. We have no need of a European solution, because there is no European problem. Or certainly no problem that basic humanity and common sense cannot resolve. We should be proud of the opportunities the current crisis offers to us to show our compassion. We should not fight against this. So in the name of my country, I say “no”. Germany votes against this text.’

Hartley gathered his papers together, and headed for the door. If he was lucky, he thought, he might be able to make a quick dash to the airport before the press hammered him.

The driver had the door open, as Nancy Ginsberg caught up, BBC camera crew in tow.

Nancy was live on air and she made the most of it. ‘How did that go, Prime Minister?’ she called. ‘Kicked in the teeth by Brussels again?’

Hartley stared grimly ahead. There were times when it was best to keep your mouth shut. This was one of them.

Harriet Marshall let out a great whoop of joy as she watched the news from Brussels. The morning had played out even better than she had hoped. The danger that the EU would make a ‘too good to refuse’ offer had been conclusively avoided. Just as important, Britain had been totally humiliated that morning in Brussels by Chancellor Brun’s icy remarks as she trashed the olive branch that had been proffered. That would be worth a point or two in the polls.

We’re on our way, thought Harriet. Boy, are we on our way! That evening the bookies, for the first time ever, had the Leave campaign nudging into the lead.

Thomas Hartkopf was also watching the news that lunchtime. He mopped his brow. Wow, it had been a close-run thing! Too many links in the chain. London must have sent a message to Moscow, who had passed it on the Berlin, but he himself had only received that message that very morning, when the chancellor had already left Berlin for Brussels. He couldn’t speak to her directly, so he had to go through Ursula Hauptman, the chancellor’s long-time trusted assistant.

‘Please tell the chancellor,’ he had told her, ‘that she should not, absolutely not, approve the Commission’s proposal for a Europe-wide emergency brake on migration. That is the formal position of the German Ministry of the Interior and we are constitutionally responsible for such matters.’

‘The chancellor will be very pleased to hear that,’ Ursula said. ‘That accords with her deeply held beliefs. I’ll patch the message though to her at once. She should be reaching Brussels about now.’

Later that day, Dr Otto Friedrich summoned Thomas Hartkopf in a terrific rage. ‘I’ve just been told that the Ministry of the Interior blocked the Commission’s proposal. Who gave those instructions? I certainly didn’t. We should have agreed to the Commission’s proposal. It is precisely what Europe needs at this time.’

Hartkopf fessed up. ‘I did. You were not available and I was the acting officer in charge. It was my responsibility to take a view. I spoke to Ursula Hauptman. She was very supportive.’

Friedrich calmed down a little. Ursula Hauptman had been so long at the chancellor’s side that she was sometimes called the ‘alternative president’.

Hartkopf added a further point. ‘Besides, I am sure you will agree that by her actions this morning, the chancellor is digging her own political grave a little bit deeper every day.’

It didn’t take long for Dr Otto Friedrich to see what Thomas Hartkopf was driving at.