A personal tribute to Etienne – “Stevy” – Davignon

This is a personal tribute written by Geert Cami, Co-Founder and Secretary General of the Jacques Delors Friends of Europe Foundation and Friends of Europe, on the occasion of the funeral of founding president Stevy Davignon. It does not represent the official views of the organisation.

Dear Stevy,

You once told me that one of your earliest memories was sitting on the knees of your father, the Belgian ambassador in Berlin, to seal confidential mail with a wax stamp.

Some 90 years later, your passing cannot be considered entirely unexpected, and yet it feels surreal, as if we somehow thought of you as immortal like Tintin, as per one of the personalised covers in your office…

Your professional merits and accomplishments have abundantly been documented, so I only wanted to add some personal thoughts about the specifics of your personality . Everyone who has had the privilege of working with you, will confirm you are the exceptional kind of person one meets once-in-a-lifetime.

You never took anything for granted, you did not impose yourself nor did you seek credits (quite on the contrary), yet you became the natural centre wherever you came. You were allergic to certain protocols, to small talk at receptions (meaning in practice you’d only turn up for the beef – in the meaning of both food and substance), you could not stand people behaving self-importantly and you remained open at all times to constructively exchanging views with others. You enjoyed the battle of ideas leading to innovative thinking, which made you accept the presidency of our new thinktank Friends of Europe in 1999, bringing on board right away also another Belgian heavyweight Jean-Luc Dehaene. You were both exceptional leaders of a generation that increasingly felt like your high-quality approaches of past decision-making were becoming invalid by a different set of behaviours and ethical codes, fuelled also by instant and permanent communications pressures.

You still made a clear distinction in discussions between the persons you engaged with and their functions, always building bridges with the people behind the functions. You listened attentively and patiently, then puffing on your pipe for a few seconds before offering your own thoughts eloquently and succinctly. Your way of expressing yourself often felt like music to linguists. Whereas the whole ritual surrounding the lighting of your pipe initially was meant to give you an extra diplomatic trump card, not to show your emotions too easily, and often hiding your impatience with certain interlocutors, it became part of your personality.

You remained a sphinx, and would rarely give insights in your private life, but I cherish the various occasions we discussed father-son relations after the passing away of my own father. And at the goodbye ceremony for Jacques Delors, you could not hide the emotion in your voice. After all, you were genuinely authentic.

Even if you were trilingual, I never felt you managed to exude the same kind of charisma in Dutch as in English or French. But you were exceptionally sharp, combining intelligence with charm, a sense of humour (not taking yourself too seriously “I think I’m not completely useless”), great integrity, pragmatism and a self-imposed sense of duty to give back to society.

That sense of duty was already reflected in the Coat of Arms chosen by your grandfather, when he was ennobled as Viscount: “Honor Onus”, which you paraphrased as “Privilege comes with obligations”.

You felt bound by that principle, even if the one lesson you vowed you’d observe forever, was that you would never let your professional career destroy your health or interfere with your private life. That conviction came from witnessing your father’s depression after being sidelined in the wake of the Second World War, merely because he felt it his duty to remain loyal to the King even when his own advice had been completely ignored. As a result, your father’s profound feeling of injustice done to him, also led to one of your own regrets in life, which was the fact that you weren’t old enough at that time to advise your father differently and to stand by his side in real terms “to take part in the battle”.

That sense of duty also implied you never would hide during storms, not from trade unions, not from the media. In circumstances when most press officers might have well advised to either refuse interviews or to script them carefully, you would always remain available, with your eternal charisma & charm. Your sense of duty always prevailed.

You had an exceptionally diverse network of friends – you never wanted to be pigeonholed – and the variety of profiles and backgrounds of the people that have been offering their condolences, almost embarrassingly often also to us, is a testimony to that, and only confirms your unifying and lasting effect. When asked about the various conspiracy theories around Bilderberg, you simply replied, “Running the world? Well, if that were the case, we should not be very proud of the current mess”

I remember our President’s dinner in 2007, which combined your own 75^th birthday with the 50^th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome: even when in a small city like Brussels, it remains bizarre that the Belgian and international networks are usually distinct; it was truly one of the first moments in Brussels that the establishments of both Belgium and the EU came together, in your honour.

You were clearly considered part of that establishment, but you cherished the opportunities to break its codes – you sympathised with rebels and appreciated strong personalities. Your intellectual freedom and independence were paramount and you spoke truth to power, including when you felt you had to do so towards good friends making bad decisions in public service. Some appreciated, some had difficulties accepting that.

Once you gave your trust to someone, you would not let go in times of adversity or external pressures. Such trust also meant you would let your collaborators get on with things independently, with valued strategic input and advice whenever asked. Moreover, you encouraged risk-taking, innovation and entrepreneurship. Even if I’ll never forget my disbelief when you first repeated my suggestion for an original guest speaker: “John Cleese? Don’t know the guy, but sounds like a good idea to try him out…”

I’ll remain grateful forever for that trust, which allowed us to take so many initiatives, from revitalising the EU’s institutional reform already in 1999 to Europe’s geostrategic place in the world, massively engaging with youth & citizens, TV-satellite debates with 28 countries, the creation of our Leadership Centre in your honour and recently the creation of the Jacques Delors Friends of Europe Foundation.

In our 27 years of intense collaboration, I can only remember one occasion in which you intervened in what we all thought at that time was creating a logistically unnecessary nuisance when you asked us to remove the table numbering at your birthday gala dinner as you did not want to give anyone a feeling of being more or less important. We had to change numbers into types of flowers – indeed, a logistical nightmare, but in hindsight, you were right. And on the few occasions we felt you were not completely right, you always gave people the feeling you had at least encouraged them to look at things differently.

You felt strongly about true leadership. Not the kind of leadership that merely follows public opinion but rather the one that leads, sets out the arguments and defends the case convincingly. And you felt that people should remain consistent and accept the democratic consequences: if you couldn’t convince your electorate, you resigned.

True leadership cared about substance more than communications, and always involved courage and initiative. As you put it so often: “The complexities of today’s challenges cannot be an alibi for inaction”.

It also meant that diplomats had to play their role at all times “Diplomacy is not about only meeting the people you like, it involves especially meeting the people you don’t like.” Bridgebuilding and problem-solving as essential principles.

I will especially cherish your human approach, your free mentorship and your wit. You were the first to check we wouldn’t forget your driver or Personal Assistant Dursun, you wanted to constantly feel the pulse of cities and societies via your exchanges with locals and taxi drivers as soon as you arrived somewhere, and you enjoyed exchanges with youth delegations every time.

And I’ll eternally smile when thinking about the numerous anecdotes; for instance, you playing the latest games on your smartphone while hosting a press conference, enjoying a cone of fries in the seats of honour of your football club Anderlecht, the despair in people’s eyes looking at the fire sprinklers after simultaneously lighting a pipe with Mo Ibrahim while launching our Africa-Europe Foundation, or putting your telephone on speaker while keeping it close to your ear when receiving an important call in the middle of a business breakfast.

And besides your powerful concluding analyses at our annual President’s Dinners, we’ll cherish your jokes – the Labrador going to the movies remains legendary.

You took part in dinner discussions with presidents, prime ministers and CEOs; in all cases, your natural authority made you stand out. Without any raised voice, you would intervene sharply, clearly and briefly and leave even the world’s leaders speechless. At a dinner in Paris, I’ll never forget the admiration you provoked with French political and business leaders (Paris – Belgian!), and you could actually feel the mutual respect when we were meeting with legendary figures like Henry Kissinger. You could close your eyes during speeches, and even look like falling asleep, to then suddenly take the microphone to synthesise the issue and offer some short off-the-cuff remarks that usually were amongst the best interventions of the day.

Panta Rei – life continues, “Wimbledon Park” will soon serve top tennis again but without your presence, Egypt’s treasures have lost a fan, and “more important than life”, your team Anderlecht will soon start its new season without your cheering…

We’ll miss you, Stevy, even if you promised me “A bientôt” when I saw you last several weeks ago…It was a privilege to work with you during all these years. I’ll never forget our discussions that have taught me so much, with your favourite classical music often playing in the background, spreading some calm over your chaotic desk full of paper and newspapers. I’ll continue to quote you with a smile on my face. Your wisdom, courage, joie de vivre, human touch, independent thinking, leadership and pragmatism will be dearly missed in today’s world.