arrêtait pas de jouer à l’Empire austro-hongrois ; au contraire, il y avait une distanciation totale par rapport aux Habsbourg dans l’enseignement de l’histoire, on était très critique…on est petits, on est qqch de différent, etc. Donc c’est pas une tradition superficielle mais c’est une tradition complètement transformée et d’autant plus authentique, si vous voulez, qu’elle est assimilée. Je crois que c’est effectivement important et sous cet angle-là, le grand problème d’adaptation pour la diplomatie autrichienne à partir de 1995, c’est de devoir changer complètement de registre. Parce que, jusqu’alors, on pouvait faire de la grande politique d’apparence ; les apparences comptaient ; on était sur scène quand Arafat venait à Vienne, quand Hadafi venait à Vienne, Nixon, Kennedy, Khrouchtchev, Brejnev, Ford, etc. Le téléspectateur voyait, voilà on est importants. Et dans l’UE, eh bien ça ne marche plus ; on peut être important comme petit pays, sous condition d’en éviter l’apparence. C’est le contraire de ce qui avait avant ! Et c’est très difficile ; d’abord c’est pas bon pour l’appréciation qu’on a de soi-même et le besoin de se montrer au public, ni du côté des hommes politiques, ni du côté des diplomates. Et c’est difficile parce qu’il faut maintenant développer d’autres talents. On en avait pas du tout l’habitude, de faire vraiment de la politique internationale sur toutes les questions ; oui quand on était au Conseil de sécurité mais c’était pas tous les jours, alors que maintenant c’est tous les jours… il faut avoir une avoir une position et si on en a pas, et bien, on est hors jeu. On peut dire oui à la fin mais on n’y contribue pas. Contribuer aujourd’hui c’est être vraiment au courant et se spécialiser sur certains dossiers où on est vraiment experts. Et heureusement qu’il y avait une certaine expertise au Balhausplatz, notamment sur les Balkans, et qu’on a donc pu jouer sur ce registre. Mais l’expert autrichien sera entendu à Bruxelles aussi longtemps que ce ne sera pas une proposition autrichienne officielle si vous voulez dans les journaux. Quand dans les journaux autrichiens que les Autrichiens ont imposé telle ou telle position à Bruxelles, et bien on ne les écoutera plus parce que c’est inacceptable. Donc c’est une politique qui ne se vend plus et jouer le jeu communautaire, c’est qqch de, à mon avis de très nouveau, difficilement compatible avec toute la tradition établie depuis 1955, et une rupture d’autant plus grande qu’on l’avoue. À mon avis… parfois les gens vous le disent…l’ancien commissaire Fischler, par exemple, l’a expliqué à plusieurs reprises ; il a écrit dans les journaux, dans des livres, l’Autriche n’est pas encore vraiment arrivée dans l’UE, mentalement.
Q : D’accord, alors ça a été difficile pour les diplomates sénior, qui étaient habitués à autre chose… A : …en même temps il y en avait qui changeaient facilement de veste, et il y en avait pour qui c’était l’accomplissement d’un rêve ; c’était le fruit défendu d’abord et maintenant on pouvait le cueillir…pour toute une partie notamment de diplomates plutôt côté ÖVP, qui était quand même plus ouvert vers les Communautés, jeunes militants européens, etc., pour eux c’était un rêve qui devenait réalité. Mais c’était pas nécessairement la majorité…
Entretien 12-13
MAE (DG III) 6 juillet 2009
Note : mini entretien 12 (non enregistré) en attendant l’interviewé 13 Ent. 13 :
…
A: Now, for almost 3 years, I have been head of dep. III.5, which is in charge of Coreper I… also responsible for economic bilateral relations with EU countries and transposition…law infringement procedures for the ECJ. But main body of work is supervising the Coreper I, formulating the Austrian position. Plus employment…
Q: So I guess you interact a lot with the other ministries?
A: Yes, on a regular basis. We have an inter-ministerial meeting once a week and during this meeting, the Austrian position is clarified with the ministries. Certain issues of coordination between ministries are settled and we get an outlook at involvement of social partners…
Q: And how do you find this process of coordination; is it hard, etc.?
A: Since enlargement, especially since the first round in 2004, but also since our accession really, we have found that it gets smoother and easier…
Q: And do you communicate often with your European counterparts?
A: Not really, depends of the presidency. There have been Council presidencies where this has been more intense; say with Germany, with Slovenia (2008) where we had a special emphasis and focus on helping them to carry through the presidency by voicing and administering our help when it was requested. But
also our advice was needed because of our experience of 2 presidencies. Especially with smaller countries I would say, but on the whole it differs from presidency to presidency.
A: Ok, so your closest partners are smaller countries…
A: Yes, I would say our neighbouring countries have always been an emphasis, and especially the newly acceded countries, the Czechs, close cooperation; Slovaks… and if only by trade, investments, etc. already close ties with Germany and Italy. But it is not really a matter of size; it depends also on the acting people; it’s not just a matter of sympathy between nations and historical ties…
Q: Ok. How do you proceed – strategy, etc. - to develop the Austrian position…?
A: Well, in the case of the very complicated directive on services – issue settled during the Austrian presidency and by now has not been transposed… In this case, when it appears on the agenda of the Commission… internally in Austria the ministry concerned, which is guiding the process, in charge…as soon as this ministry is designated, it convenes an inter-ministerial meeting with all the ministries and stakeholders (social partners, etc.) which are involved. And then there is a long lengthy process of common decision-making process through the working groups, contacts with the European Parliament, and finally Coreper I… etc. … dossiers are dealt with by inter-ministerial meetings in view of particular Coreper I meeting and Council meeting. Generally, there would be a big meeting where all dossiers for a particular Council are dealt with; that has been made much smoother over the last 10-12 years… we witnessed that everything has become much more efficient.. in certain cases heads of department don’t need to attend the meetings, they are replaced by their coordinators. Because by now… the early stages go so well that no need for important decisions in the last preparatory meetings before the Council. So that shows that things have been better and better prepared over time.
Q: In all the process, is it important to get to know what the other MS think, etc.?
A: Yes, yes it is. But that side of things is normally dealt with by the main ministry in charge, which inform all the other ministries, including ours, of what the positions of the other countries are. For instance, GMO… we would see what’s the other countries’ opinions; where do we meet; where do we have different nuances between the opinions. We (our ministry) are sort of the “fire-engine” in the case of emergencies, when the people in charge from the other ministries, which work in the working groups together with their peers from other MS, don’t reach an agreement and cannot find a solution to a particular problem. Or when, due to some constraints, the negotiations get bogged down, then occasionally we would intervene and try, by our embassy network to directly intervene in the capitals of the other country. That has happened for instance during our first presidency in 1998, when we were dealing with the Sixth framework Program and the decision-making about that program, we found ourselves in delay, there were still very stringent differences of opinion between various countries and we were finally forced to intervene alongside the main ministry dealing with the dossier, intervene through the capitals… And this occasionally happens; it happens maybe twice a year on average but not more often. Normally the dossiers are very well dealt with by the ministers in charge; they prepare everything for the Council meeting where decisions are being taken.
Q: You talked about the presidency in 1998; how was this first experience….?
A: At that time we prepared very well although I was basically coming back from abroad, from Slovenia, just about 8 months before, but most of the preparation period I was able to witness. I would say that the preparation was very systematic; we talked very much in terms of emergencies, of going through our working program but in the end, it was a much much smaller engine we were driving at that time. Because the presidency in 2006 was already a presidency of 25 MS whereas before it was 15 countries with ourselves. And that was a great difference. There was much more need for discussion. On the one hand, we were much better trained, because we knew what would be happening; we had sort of a blueprint of what a presidency looks like, although we learned from the first presidency that you cannot prepare for the unexpected; you have to have some reserve troopsto enter the fray when the battle gets going on other subjects than you had prepared. And we didn’t realize that during the first presidency how the whole agenda can be basically hijacked by a few issues, like gas deliveries from Russia a new crisis in the Middle East or, etc. And that means you have to put a lot of resources into… you cannot be very well prepared for that…it just happens out of the blue. So our feeling was that we needed to… we were much more confident, we put more resources into the day to day business… and we had many more meetings, many more things on our agenda, not only more countries, but more things… more important meetings. But our administration was much better trained and I would say there were fewer situations where we had to hurry and improvise…that was my feeling that during the first presidency we often found ourselves improvising whereas in the second presidency everything was really planned and there were much better contingency plans for when something would happen. And we had also… steering groups… an executive secretariat (my boss here was head of the executive secretariat) and that was an outfit which was provided