When it was time to select the President of the first EEC Commission, the presidency of the High Authority of the ECSC was a French fiefdom (from Monnet to Finet via Mayer). Monnet lent his support to a Dutch Minister of steady temperament and well-known Federalist views, Sicco Mansholt. He also saw Jean Rey, the Belgian Minister for Economic Affairs, as a good potential candidate. For the fledgling Euratom Community, Paris backed Louis Armand. Germany asserted its own rights; acceding to the presidency of the largest of the three Commissions was a form of political rehabilitation.
Consensus between the Six was not reached until after the entry into force of the treaties on 7 January 1958, in favour of Walter Hallstein. An eminent professor of law and close collaborator of Chancellor Adenauer, head of the German delegation to the negotiations on the Schuman Plan and then to the Conference of Messina, a long-standing European whose signature was on the treaties of 1957, Hallstein was tailor-made for the job.
There were two Hallstein Commissions: the first was in place for four years (1958-1962) and the second was extended beyond 1966, due to the treaty on the merger of the executives, which entered into force in July 1967. Delors and Barroso held the position for 10 years, but Hallstein ran them close: 9 years and 5 months. Throughout his ‘reign’, influential members of the College included the aforementioned Mansholt and Rey plus Robert Marjolin of France. De Gaulle opposed the idea of the single Commission, now the Commission of the European Communities, being presided over by one and the same man, which he saw as paving the way for a European federal state. Hallstein resigned; he had created the position and steered his ship successfully; he would go down in history as one of the great Presidents.
His successor was to come from an internal pool of candidates. Jean Rey was chosen. Not only was he familiar with the new institution and had proven his worth, particularly as negotiator in the Kennedy Round, but he was also suitable in terms of political criteria: a small country after a large one; a Liberal after a Christian Democrat. These concerns of double alternation are one of the keys to understand the decisions of the Council in this area, but it is not an absolute rule. The mandate of that Commission was three years (July 1967 - July 1970). In his team and the one that followed were some names to conjure with: Raymond Barre, Jean-François Deniau, Wilhelm Haferkamp.
It was then the turn of a large member state which, in the Europe of Six, could only be Italy. After various names did the rounds in Rome, that of the young Christian Democrat Minister, Franco Maria Malfatti, was proposed by his boss, Aldo Moro, and accepted by the Council. He was far more concerned with Italian politics than European matters; the opposite was true of his fellow Italian, Altiero Spinelli, now a member of the College. Malfatti stuck it out in Brussels for less than two years and rushed back home at the first opportunity to stand in the Italian general elections. It was finally time for Sicco Mansholt, eternal Vice-President with responsibility for the Common Agriculture Policy, to step forward. But he only got to enjoy the top job from March 1972 to January 1973: due to the first round of enlargement, the Malfatti-Mansholt Commission could not exceed three years.
With the exception of the ephemeral Malfatti, the Presidents of the Commission, and even the more notable members of the College, had long been steeped in European political culture and the source was the Commission itself; this would not last.
The year 1972 marked a turning point. The accession treaties were signed in January: the first enlargement would take effect one year later. The French President, Georges Pompidou, had put European construction back on the agenda at The Hague Summit (1969), opening the door to the United Kingdom. Revisited by Community spirit and patching things up with its partners, France could allow itself a relative leadership. Enough of institutional squabbles; new projects and more stability at the top of the chief institution were needed. In 1958, François-Xavier Ortoli, graduate of the highly prestigious French École nationale d’administration, became Director at the Commission and then within Pompidou’s Cabinet, and then Minister in Pompidou’s government, and then of others. A dream ‘euro-Pomidolian’, and competent with it. He was appointed for four years (1973 - 1977). Monetary turbulence, the first oil crisis and rising unemployment were constant challenges to this man, who was an economist by temperament. His strengths lay more in analysis and calls for action than in risk-taking. But at least regional policy was born.
Would small countries continue to be given a chance thereafter, as the unwritten law of rotation would suggest? No. The British, led by Heath, joined; Wilson was in power when they confirmed the yes vote by 67% in the referendum of 1975. That was a very nice welcoming gift. It was a foregone conclusion. The case is unique in the history of the EU: no new member has taken the Presidency of the Commission so quickly since. (To be continued).
Renaud Denuit