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Raymond Le Gay
An exclusive interview with the new EEC directorgeneral for transport, by Cliolffs editor
• The EEC Commission's new directorgeneral for transport, 53-year-old Raymond Le Goy, is a career civil servant but no ivory-tower bureaucrat. When he entered the army immediately after getting first-class honours in the history tripos at Cambridge his first taste of service life was as a driver. And he recalled, when I interviewed him last week, that when he was working in the road transport division of the MoT in 1947, his responsibility for "social matters" sometimes involved him in such practical problems as permits for the supply of sheets for lorry drivers' digs, and the standard of food in carmen's pull-ups.
More recently, as Under-Secretary at the Department of Trade and Industry, in charge of one of the civil aviation divisions, he has been operating in a more rarified atmosphere — but he has not lost touch with the situation in other transport fields. He is, for instance, well aware of the road transport problems — including vehicle weights and sizes — likely to be waiting on that desk in Brussels. He is already becoming involved in EEC matters, but will not be moving to the Continent before April.
His present office, on the second floor of Shell-Mex House overlooking the Thames. I would guess accurately mirrors his combination of practical and artistic interests and talents: on the walls a huge commercial map of the world is flanked by delicate framed prints of Versailles, Pisa and the opening of the "new" London Bridge.
No standing on dignity here. When I remarked how warm the office was, he twinkled back: "Ah, yes, but you see this is an oil company building!"
Raymond Le Goy — "Ray" to his friends — is a man of intellect, charm and culture, with a restless energy and the sort of personality that creates a presence. It is no surprise to me that he has a reputation as a skilled and forceful negotiator.
French and Swahili were his university languages, and he is probably being modest when he describes his Italian, Spanish and Portuguese as being of tourist standard. His Italian will be of immediate value now, since he reports directly to the new Commissioner for Transport, Sig Carlo Scarascia Mugnozza, from Rome. He will, as he stressed to me, represent the Commission of the Community, and no individual nation's interests. His appointment came from the Commission — though no doubt HM Government had murmured its preferences in the right places beforehand.
Three directors
Mr Le Goy will be responsible to the Commissioner for the whole sweep of Common Market transport, and is interested to see that Signor Mugnozza is also commissioner for the environment, thus paralleling the scope of our own DoE.
As chief EEC civil servant for transport matters, Raymond Le Goy will have three transport directors reporting to him, each overseeing different aspects of the transport scene (which covers economics, international relations and a host of matters other than the political and legislative problems which gather the limelight). At present the three directors are Dr G. Krauss from Germany, M J. Doucet from France and M Y. Debas from Belgium. The deliberate mixing of nationalities is part of the complex "checks and balances" across the whole Commission executive echelon. The directors' jobs, too, are Commission appointments and so are subject to the general review of posts which has followed the enlargement of the Community.
It was too early to expect Mr Le Goy to make significant comments about the way that EEC transport matters will shape, but he gave me a glimpse of his philosophy. He is emphatic that although many aspects of transport are, by the nature of things, international in character, it is a complex field in which the great accumulation of regulatory detail is important, especially to individual nations.
Although his experience has lately been in the international civil aviation field, where harmonization (yes — the word is familiar there, too) is voluntary, he sees common rules as something to be achieved as gently as possible.
Perhaps ironically, air transport is the one mode not covered by the EEC Commission, but Raymond Le Goy's tremendously varied background makes him seem at home in any transport sphere. He had an early taste of "multi-modal" problems when he was Staff Captain, East Africa Command, during the war and was running transport over the whole vast territory of middle Africa. Later, in 1944-6, he was OC the General Transport Company, and when demobolized he was eager to make a civil career in transport.
He found it first in London Transport (then still the pre-BTC London Passenger Transport Board) where as a management trainee he became personal assistant to the general manager, road services — George Sinclair. This was in the terrible winter of '46 and he recalls being plunged straight into such problems as chronic corrosion of buses caused by persistent salting of London's frozen roads.
While with LPTB he successfully sat the civil service reconstruction competitions, for returned servicemen, and so by May 1947 was in the road transport division of the Ministry of Transport, where, as well as driver accommodation matters, he was immersed in road haulage questions — notably carriers' licensing and fuel rations for trucks. Soon after, as a principal on the staff side, one of his tasks was ensuring a supply of suitable staff for the traffic areas.
From 1952 to 1955 he was deep in the international shipping side of the Ministry, then was with highways for three years — though as it was by then the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation he found himself secretary of the European Airports Conference too.
Inland waterways affairs were his concern in 1958/59 and then he was really launched into the civil aviation area where, under various changes of Ministry name and with progressively greater responsibilities, he has remained until this day. It was in 1968 that he became Under-Secretary, representing the UK's interests in worldwide air traffic negotiations, not least in the European Civil Aviation Conference — whose parents are the Council of Europe and ICAO.
Who's Who lists Raymond Edgar Michel Le Goy's recreations as music, theatre and race relations: the latter perhaps reflecting his activities as a world traveller.
His love of the theatre is easily explained:
his mother was a musical comedy actress. And what about that name, I asked; was Britain's occupant of that director-general post a Frenchman after all? Nothing so simple. A Londoner born and bred, but his father was a Breton Mauritian — seafaring
Brittany stock living in Mauritius; he moved to London before Raymond was born.
Mr Le Goy's wife was born in Jamaica, his two sons are at an English school. Unquestionably an internationalist, with a cosmopolitan's tolerance — but a tremendous sense of drive. Just the blend of toughness and tact for that important seat in Brussels.
B.C.