THE BIG COUNTRIES'S POODLE?

Is Mr. Santer apt to his role?

(The Economist, 14/07/95)

GERMANY, France and Britain may have deep differences over Europe, but they agree on one thing. Next year's intergovernmental conference on the future of the EU MUST Clip the authority of the European Commission. The growing fear among some smaller EU members is that the president of the commission, Jacques Santer, is already doing the big countries' work fbr them.

The struggle for influence between the commission and national governments is a constant theme in the European Union. A strong commission is the small countries' best ally against domination by their bigger partners. Six months into his five-year term, Mr Santer seems unwilling to take on the large EU members, as Jacques Delors, his predecessor, did. To avoid upsetting France, for example, Mr Santer has held back proposals to liberalise postal services and other utilities.

Mr Santer got his job precisely because the big countries, and Britain especially, were fed up with the high-profile and often abrasive leadership of Mr Delors. Mr Santer has not disappointed his sponsors. one top British official in Brussels notes approvingly that Mr Santer "is behaving like a finance minister". Decoded, that means the federalists see him as a killjoy, one who resists new policies on the ground that they cost money. Mr Santer's detractors say that such resistance is peculiar for the head of a body which has sole responsibility for EU policy initiatives.

Mr Santer has won praise from several of his fellow commissioners, but that may be another sign of weakness. Mr Delors was heartily disliked by many colleagues, because he bossed them around and did not hide his disdain for the less gifted and more slothful ones. When Emma Bonino, the fisheries commissioner, made inflammatory remarks during the Eu's recent halibut war with Canada, it was Sir Leon Brittan, the trade commissioner, rather than Mr Santer who calmed her down. Yves Thibault de Silguy, the commissioner for monetary affairs, has been left alone to prepare for the introduction of a single European currency-a role Mr Delors used to reserve for himsel

Mr Santer's supporters point out that he has little choice but to bend to strong anticommission sentiment in London, Paris and Bonn. Most of the current commissioners, they add, are completely invisible. The only ones who get noticed nowadays are those with day-to-day "management" portfolios like Karel Van Miert at competition policy, Sir Leon at trade and Franz Fischler at agriculture.

Mr Santer should probably not let his profile blur much further. In recent weeks, journalists have taken to shuffling out of his press conferences long before he has finished speaking. Such behaviour has not been seen since the days of Gaston Thorn, a Luxembourger, like Mr Santer, who distinguished himself in the early 1980s as the most ineffectual president in Eu history. Mr Santer will soon have to set out his stall for the coming intergovernmental conference.

But whether Mr Santer's modesty is a deliberate strategy, or just his nature, it could, paradoxically, end up serving the commission's interests. In the early 1990s, the pugnaciousness of Mr Delors's commission made many people afraid of Brussels. To day, any Euro-sceptic who tried to paint this amiable and solid Luxembourg burgher as a tyrant would appear ridiculous. The commission's fans in the smaller countries would doubtlessdisagree, but, if Mr Santer continues to make the commission a less threatening institution, he may, in the long run, help it hang on to more of its powers.