A monument that had yet cultivated the simplicity

In France, is remembered especially as he led with fingering, for the European Commission, discussions with Dominique Strauss-Kahn in the rescue of Credit Lyonnais. The former European Commissioner for competition, the Belgian Karel Van Miert, died on the night of Monday to Tuesday. Irony of history, one which was nicknamed "the most powerful man in Europe", in the second half of the 1990s, died at sixty-seven years after falling to a scale, picking fruit in his garden.

Merger of us aviation Boeing and McDonnell Gouglas groups, agreement between Kirch and Bertelsmann media German Giants: at a time when the market was single European beginning just, Karel van Miert has given the post of Commissioner for competition titles of nobility. "We he have a proud candle", said Neelie Kroes, who now occupies the function he acted from 1993 to 1999 under Jacques Delors then Jacques Santer yesterday. "He did not hesitate to deliver battles when it was necessary." "And that it has conducted have shaped the way in which we see today the competition policy", she hailed, rendering tribute to his "fighting spirit" and its determination. Hesitant steps to simulate of anger to impress his opponents, gifted a policy out of the ordinary, the "small Belgian" sense, as he loved himself to call, had failed resist political pressure, they come from Europe or the United States, to defend the Community competition rules. Without seeing any contradiction with social democratic beliefs. "He understood that the policy of competition, far from being a tool at the service of ultraliberalism, is above all an instrument in the hands of the public power to regulate the power of private trusts," explained a close.

"It is a real monument disappearing."

"To err is but it must be correct," said in his rocky accent this son of farmer Flemish, eldest of a family of nine children. Translation: regardless of the competition policy is not an exact science, the important thing is to make the decisions with rectitude and honesty. Left that they are difficult, as the State aid paid by the Belgium to the forges de Clabecq, one of the last bastions of the Walloon steel industry, declared bankrupt in 1997. Or impugned, as for the merge in the steel tubes between Italian Dalmine, the German Mannesmann and Vallourec, authorized French despite him by the Commission in 1994. "It is better to die with its flag to lie in open country", said the Commissioner, who had mastered both Dutch and French than English and German.

Directorate General for competition, but also transportation, which he was Commissioner from 1989 to 1993, were not the only yesterday, in a State of shock. The European Parliament, where he was member of Parliament from 1979 to 1985, bringing two times the list of the Flemish Socialist Party. Domestically, he presided over the Party of his split with the francophone PS in 1978 to January 1989. "This is a real monument which disappears", said yesterday the head of the Flemish regional government, the Christian-Democrat Kris Peeters. A monument that had yet cultivated the simplicity. And the fruits of his garden, that the Commissioner was distributing to colleagues, in crates, at the entrance of his Office.