Tuomioja, the EU elite, and Berlin Plus
PERSPECTIVE
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By Anssi Miettinen
Do you happen to remember Berlin Plus?
No matter. I'd already managed to forget it myself.
But Berlin Plus came back to mind on Friday when I watched a breakfast-TV interview with Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja (SDP).
Tuomioja criticised the EU elite for alienating the public. He argued that the results of the successive French and Dutch referendums on the new EU Constitution reflected a public protest that stemmed from the overweening attitude of decision-makers, who believe they always know better than the public what is best for them. Tuomioja referred to something akin to selective deafness from the elite.
It raised a bit of a smile to my lips.
In the autumn of 2002, I was in Brussels as a visiting journalist familiarising myself with the workings of the EU decision-making mill. After three months on station, I already began to have a slight whiff of what was important and what was not.
In December around the time of the European Council summit in Copenhagen, after a meeting of the foreign ministers of all the member states, a press conference was arranged for the Finnish press corps.
"We reached agreement on Berlin Plus", said Tuomioja.
I was confused, since I didn't have the faintest idea what this was all about.
Bravely, I tried to ask what precisely had been agreed.
"Well, agreement on Berlin Plus", snorted Tuomioja, but he did not go any further towards enlightening me as to what it was.
There were a few other Finnish reporters alongside me, but they, too, seemed to be largely in the dark about Berlin and its plus.
What did surface was that there had been a risk of some kind of technical snafu over the subject, and that it had something to do with NATO.
Tuomioja wasn't in much of a mood to talk, and he several times made to get up and leave. Asking a daft question at this point would have been bound to prompt a barbed reply.
The press briefing was a short one, and the Foreign Minister more or less sneaked out of the room.
I went back to my desk in a state of some discomfort. What the hell was Berlin Plus when it was at home?
Was it another of those rather meaningless declarations? Perhaps after all it was not that important, seing as how the Foreign Minister wasn't eager to go on about it.
Nevertheless, I went in search of additional information from the Internet. It turned out that it was indeed a large matter and worthy of the reporting.
Berlin Plus was diplospeak, EU jargon. In fact it was the short title for a package of agreements on the conditions under which EU-led crisis management forces could make use of NATO resources and capabilities, such as airborne transport and intelligence-gathering capacity.
NATO member Turkey had been dragging its feet over the agreement for some long time, and the agreement now reached between the two bodies meant that the EU rapid reaction forces really could operate meaningfully in the near future.
Tuomioja himself could naturally have told us this.
For the most part, the Finnish permanent EU representation in Brussels did a good job of providing correspondents with background information and explanations of difficult issues. The Commission, too, was relatively open in its spreading of information, and one could ask even dumb questions without much fear of retribution.
However, quite the worst situation existed in the closed ministerial councils, which is where the big issues were actually being decided. All the same, Finnish journalists generally did often manage to get the minister himself or herself to report on what had happened.
After my short stint in Brussels, Berlin Plus remained in my mind for some time as an example of how haughty and elitist can be the reporting of even big decisions.
From colleagues I have heard that this style is by no means a complete taboo for Tuomioja.
Hopefully in his brickbats towards the EU elite on Friday there was also a dash of self-criticism.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 4.6.2005
ANSSI MIETTINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
anssi.miettinen@hs.fi
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| 7.6.2005 - THIS WEEK |
 Tuomioja, the EU elite, and Berlin Plus |
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