De Europese erfenis van Margaret Thatcher (en)

BRUSSELS - From her days in opposition to her sudden and dramatic demise, Europe was at the heart of Margaret Thatcher's 11 years as British Prime Minister.

As with her domestic legacy, Thatcher's attitude towards Europe is more complicated than meets the eye. She was one of Europe's leading single marketeers who later became the heroine and patron saint of modern euroscepticism.

Ultimately, it was Europe, not the Labour party, the trade unions or even the electorate, that cast her out of office in November 1990.

In this context, the tributes coming out of the EU institutions on Monday paint an interesting picture. To European Council President Herman van Rompuy, Thatcher was "a transformative force in the UK and equally important in shaping the European agenda."

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso described her as "a circumspect yet engaged player in the European Union" who would be remembered for "her contributions to and her reserves about our common project."

Martin Schultz, the socialist President of the European Parliament, said that Thatcher had been a "committed European" in driving forward the single market.

In opposition she criticised the Labour government of James Callaghan for refusing to sign up to the Exchange Rate Mechanism, the forerunner for the euro, and she also argued in favour of a common European approach to defence.

In 1975 Thatcher supported the Yes campaign for Britain to remain in the then EEC. Compared with Labour's 1970s leaders Harold Wilson and James Callaghan, Thatcher was almost a europhile. Video footage exists of her on the campaign trail wearing a garish sweater adorned with the flags of the eleven other member states of the Community.

Her most famous - and typically Thatcherite - victory in Europe was securing the British budget rebate.

Nearly 30 years after it was won at the Fontainebleau summit in 1984, the rebate still exists and has been worth nearly €90 billion and established itself as one of the "red lines" present in every EU budget negotiation.

Just as no French President would ever dare talk about giving up the Common Agricultural Policy, no British Prime Minister would ever offer to unilaterally give up the rebate.

Her negotiating stance was classically British - Thatcher did not care that she fought alone and she refused to back down until she had got most of what she came for. The late Hugo Young put it perfectly - "by asking reasonable questions in a wholly unreasonable manner, she secured more of 'our money' from Brussels."

Thatcher's speech in 1988 at the College of Europe in Bruges is now widely regarded as marking a line in the sand.

In the so-called "Bruges group," of which Thatcher served as Honorary President, the speech even spawned its own eurosceptic campaign group devoted to fighting "the intellectual battle against European integration, EU federalism, centralisation and enlargement."

But the text of the speech is rather different from the rhetoric that surrounds it.

It reflects her innate scepticism of the European Commission which she regarded as unaccountable and illegitimate, and a rejection of the concept of "ever closer union." It is also clear that EU decision-making should remain almost exclusively in the hands of national governments. But by no means is it a tub-thumping paean to nationalism.

In Thatcher's words, Europe should be "a family of nations, understanding each other better, appreciating each other more, doing more together but relishing our national identity no less than our common European endeavour."

It also underscores the importance Thatcher placed on ending the Cold War and integrating the Soviet bloc countries of eastern Europe with the rest of the Community.

"We must never forget that east of the Iron Curtain, people who once enjoyed a full share of European culture, freedom and identity have been cut off from their roots," she said, adding that "we shall always look on Warsaw, Prague and Budapest as great European cities."

Unsurprisingly, some of the most fulsome tributes to Mrs Thatcher were from politicians in Warsaw and Prague.

Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski labelled her a "fearless champion of liberty [who] stood up for captive nations," while former Czech president Vaclav Klaus described her death as "a huge loss for all supporters of freedom, democracy and market capitalism".

Was Thatcher the dominant force in European politics in the 1980s?

Probably not.

The politics of European integration owes far more to the likes of Helmut Kohl, Jacques Delors, Valery Giscard d'Estaing, even Roy Jenkins, all men who, unlike Thatcher, enjoyed the politics by compromise in smoke-filled rooms that has traditionally been the hallmark of EU decision-making.

But while she may have regretted it in later life, freedom of capital along with market liberalisation across a range of services and industrial sectors, is part of the Thatcher legacy.

Not that anyone is likely to forget the politician who, as former French president Francois Mitterand put it, "had the eyes of Caligula but the mouth of Monroe."