Photo with caption: RESOLUTE. EU Commissioner Emma Bonino, visiting Sweden today, has chocked officials the world over with her straightforwardness. She has, among other things, been in jail for struggling for the right to free abortion in Italy, andbeen shot at on her way from a refugee camp in Burundi.

SVENKA DAGLABET (swedish daily), pagina 8

OLE RYBORG

Brussels (SvD)- She was shot at by rebels on her way from a refugee camp in Burundi. She was put in jail for her struggle for the right to free abortion in Italy. She hunger-struck to focus attention on the lack of efforts from the side of the world community to help suffering people in the Third World.

THE PORTRAIT

This Italian woman, today visiting Sweden, is as far as you can get from the image of a typical Italian politician, and she is still less of a typical E.U. Commissioner. In fact, the denomination of political rebel suits her better, for although Mrs. Bonino was picked out for the job as an E.U. Commissioner by the former conservative Premier Silvio Berlusconi her performance as a Commissioner and earlier as an Italian politician shows that she is a politician who proceeds from word to action, who is not content with talking only like Swedish environmentalist and leftist politicians.

Mrs. Bonino was the last to be picked out to a post among the 20 members of the Commission. And when she was chosen at last, the tug-of-war for the different fields of work was already ended. Mrs. Bonino had to be content with the left-overs: consumers' questions, humanitarian office and fishery. The social security questions were the only ones of which she had experience from her earlier political life. However, she immediately brought her activist attitude into fishery and consumers' questions as well.

Mrs. Bonino had barely received her title as the Commissioner for fishery when the E.U. was drawn into a fishing war with Canada. And as always, when the Italian E.U. Commissioner is required to take a stand in difficult questions, she pushed the officials and their proposals aside. She wants to talk directly to those who are affected by decisions, and she wnts to see what their reality looks like. It cannot be done, said the Commission's officials. The ships are out at sea for months on end, was the argument. But Mrs. Bonino would not let herself be stopped by such technicalities. She hired a helicopter and flew out to one of the ships, where she let herself be lowered down by a steel wire.

It is a different experience to travel with Mrs. Bonino on her missions over the world. When she is out to check that E.U. millions are used in a reasonable way, she acts like anything but a typical E.U. Commissioner.

It is Mrs Bonino herself who fills the immigration forms on Bangkok Airport. She receives the flight tickets and the passports on Madrid Airport and divides them into two lots, Smokers in one and non-smokers in one. She herself is a heavysmoker.

When she receives Commission officials or E.U. embassy personnel in Phnom Penh, New Delhi or Port au Prince, the traditional diplomats are chocked by her direct and relaxed attitude, She speaks in such a simple and suaightforrard way that there can never be any doubt about her intention. This kind of behaviour is chocking in the beginning for (he officials, especially those from Latin countries.

On the other hand, Mrs. Bonino to does not blow her top when things ate not going according to plan. She is used to travelling in the Third World, so a couple of hours' waiting in the domestic hall of New Delhi Airport where the air conditioning has broken down leaves her unaffected. Instead, it is the accompanying journalists who complain about the heat: 340 C. Chain-smoking ant slightly sweating, she reads in the heavy volume, ten centimeters thick, which officials in Brussels have compiled for her on Tibet, in order to prepare for her meeting with Dalai Lama in his exile in Dhramsala.

Mrs. Bonino's relaxed way of dressing and general attitude often make her counterparts misjudge her. Once when she ran into the Cambodian Prime Minister on Phnom Penh Airport, ho talked bullyingly to her as if she were a schoolgirl. Many relief workers have also made the mistake of underestimating her political ability. They see a physically slender person with a big heart and draw the conclusion that this combination equals deficient intellectual ability and political strength. A fatal mistake.

When she visited relief workers on a slope on the outskirts of Haitian capital Port au Prince, where they distributed food and made health examinations of the children (financed by the E.U.), she hugged the activists warmly for their contributions which helped saving the lives of a lot of Haitian children. Two hours later, however, the relief workers' bosses receive sharp reproaches from the same lady. The co-operation between the aid organizations is so bad that the aid cannot be utilized to the full. Mrs. Bonino finds this totally unacceptable.

Since tax-payers' money are at stake, she lets journalists come along everywhere, even to meetings which a Swedish Commissioner would regard as highly confidential. To her, openness is not just a prnciple but something to be put into practico.

Now that Mrs. Bonino is coming to Sweden, it is in her role as the consumers' Commissioner. Her attitude towards consumers' questions is, in a way, completely opposed to the Swedish one. While Swedish authorities like to forbid bad products, Mrs. Bonuses opinion is that the E.U. should not interfere with whet can be sold. If consumers want to buy cheap junk it should be their right, according to Mrs. Bonino.

She has kept her direct style in handling consumers' questions as well. Firstly, she exchanged all the members of the well-paid committee of officials who were by far too slow in delivering proposals before decisions on E.U. roles were to be taken. Then she went out to buy crisps ant fast food in the corner shop in order to endure when she was going to launch her proposal for cost-per-unit prices in the Commission. Without appropriationsand without formal power in the consumer area, she can resch results only, he says, if she gets assistance and inspiration from the member states.

If Sweden has anything to contribute in the field of consumer questions, then Mrs. Bonino will function as a political activist, able to transform good ideas into practical action even in Brussels. But it is A waste of energy to come to her with moralizing talk about the need to protect weak consumers against evil capitalists.