Voice of calm
- ️Wed Nov 03 1999
TALK about being thrown in at the deep end. If Ireland’s former Attorney-General David Byrne had been hoping to ease himself slowly into his new job as Health and Consumer Protection Commissioner, then he must be ruing the day he agreed to take up the post.
November 3, 1999 5:00 pm CET
No sooner had the man criticised by both politicians and newspaper columnists in his native Ireland for “lacking political experience” got his feet under the desk in his plush new Brussels office than he found himself cast in the role of referee in an extremely vicious and intensely political Anglo-French slanging match over the safety of each other’s meat exports.
It is certainly too early to write the definitive history of the 1999 Anglo-French beef war, but initial impressions suggest that Byrne has not been unduly phased by his unexpected baptism of fire.
In Strasbourg last week, he portrayed himself as the calm and collected mediator in the heated dispute, calling for “reason to prevail” when he addressed a group of furious British Labour and Conservative MEPs, and insisting that the cross-Channel spat should be resolved using a “sound, science-based approach”.
Brussels insiders and politicians back home have been watching Byrne’s performance closely to see whether his political antennae are well tuned enough to handle such hugely sensitive disputes, given the concern expressed before he was appointed about whether he was up to the job.
Writing in the Irish press the day after it was announced that Byrne was being nominated as the country’s Commissioner, Alan Dukes, a prominent member of Ireland’s opposition Fine Gael party, said appointing the former attorney-general had been a mistake.
Dukes had himself been tipped as a possible Commissioner by some Irish pundits, but he insisted that his comments were not those of a bad loser. He said that as an opposition politician, he never really stood a chance of being selected any way, and argued that the decision to pick Byrne had “put a decent man into a difficult position”.
“It is my firm view that Commissioners should have hands on experience of the rough and tumble of political life. The Commission is an intensely political place,” he added.
The other two people who were considered as serious contenders for the job which Byrne finally won — Ireland’s former Justice Minister Maire Geoghegan-Quinn and Health Minister Brian Cowen — are both career politicians.
The leader of Ireland’s Labour Party, Rauri Quinn, was also openly critical of Byrne’s appointment on the grounds that the Commissioner-to-be lacked political savvy.
But not everyone shares the sceptics’ view of Byrne as a political novice. Some argue that the post of attorney-general, to which Byrne was appointed in 1997, has become increasingly political in recent years.
They also point out that a precedent has already been set for Irish attorney-generals becoming Commissioners. The flamboyant Peter Sutherland — a man no one would describe as politically naive — served as Ireland’s top lawyer before being dispatched to Brussels in 1984.
A glance at Byrne’s curriculum vitae shows he has in fact had some fairly serious ‘hands-on’ political experience.
As attorney-general, he was one of his country’s key negotiators in the talks which led to last year’s ‘Good Friday’ peace agreement in Northern Ireland.
“In terms of high politics, Mr Byrne was one of the four Irish representatives at the direct negotiations with Tony Blair in the run-up to the Belfast Agreement, and he dealt directly with Sinn Fein and Unionist politicians as well as the British attorney and solicitor-general,” says Adrian Hardiman, one of Ireland’s leading lawyers.
Byrne was also instrumental in organising the referendum which subsequently approved the Good Friday deal.
The new Health and Consumer Protection Commissioner also has a fair amount of experience when it comes to EU politics. He campaigned in favour of Irish entry into what was then the European Community in the 1970s and has been a keen supporter of the Union ever since.
This was a point he was quick to stress during his ‘audition’ at the European Parliament before taking office in September. When questioned about the involvement of his political party, Fianna Fáil, in the Parliament’s Eurosceptic Union For Europe (UFE) group, Byrne categorically denied any suggestion that he was anti-EU. “My party has been completely pro-European since 1972, when it led the campaign to join,” he insisted.
Byrne’s more recent ‘Union-friendly’ activities include helping to organise Ireland’s national referendum on the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty, a task he carried out as a member of the Irish government’s cabinet sub-committee on European affairs.
Aside from his direct involvement in EU policy issues, the new Commissioner also has considerable experience of working in an international environment. For the seven years prior to his appointment as Ireland’s top lawyer, he was based in Paris as a member of the International Chamber of Commerce’s court of arbitration.
One of the hardest things for people coming from a purely national environment to the Union’s cosmopolitan policy-making hothouse to learn is the simple fact that, as one insider put it, “people from other countries do things differently”.
Byrne’s supporters say the skills he acquired while working with colleagues from a number of different countries and dealing with disputes between people from diverse cultural backgrounds will serve him well in Brussels.
It is very early days, but the new Commissioner appears to have made a good first impression, although some suggest that his performances in television and radio interviews since the beef dispute began have been less than inspiring. Critics claim he has been wooden and overly-legalistic, and warn that he will have to brush up on his media skills if he is to meet one of the greatest challenges facing him; namely, to win the confidence of a European public battered by a string of food scares.
Byrne’s performance at his European Parliament confirmation hearing was, however, judged to have been a success, winning him initial approval from many of his potential opponents in European consumer groups and the Parliament.
He succeeded in convincing MEPs that he intended to put consumer concerns above business demands over the next five years, and pushed all the right buttons by declaring that he was a “firm believer in transparency” when it came to food safety and other consumer issues.
After the hearing, fellow Irishman Jim Murray, who heads the European consumer lobby group BEUC, said he felt that the former attorney-general had made a good start.
But the real test for any new Commissioner comes when he or she actually takes office. It is relatively easy to say Parliament-friendly things to MEPs before starting work, but quite another to put those fine words into practice once your name is on the door.
Over the next five years, Byrne will have to stand his ground against industry lobbyists, angry governments and fellow Commissioners with competing portfolios.
The beef dispute has underlined just how important that will be at a very early stage in his Brussels career. Byrne appears to be surviving his initial plunge into the shark-infested waters of EU politics, but he will be all well aware that he has a very long swim ahead.
26 April 1947 Born in County Kildare, Ireland
1960s Studied at University College and King’s Inns in Dublin
1970 Became a barrister
1974-87 Member of Irish bar council
1988-97 Member of national committee of international chamber of commerce (ICC)
1990-97 Member of the ICC international court of arbitration, Paris
1997-99 Irish attorney-general
September 1999 Confirmed as European Commissioner for Health and Consumer Protection