THE VENICE SUMMIT : Knockdowns at ‘Boxing Match’ : Europeans See Talks as a Bout President Lost

President Francois Mitterrand of France, a philosopher of summitry, worries that too many people think of the annual economic summits as boxing matches, with winners and knockouts. But his warning has not stopped Europeans from looking at this week’s summit as a bout in which they held off President Reagan and knocked him down once or twice.

Most Europeans regard the summit as a disappointment and a defeat for Reagan. Some commentators, like the anchorman of Europe One, a French radio station, described the supposed defeat in poetic terms. “For Reagan,” he said, “it will be seen as the summit of his decline.”

But most turned to more sports-like imagery, the kind Mitterrand has deplored.

In Belgium, for example, the television channel RTL-TV said: “The Americans have lost the game.”

“America is disappointed,” said the Italian newspaper La Repubblica in Thursday morning headlines. “The Summit Is a Defeat for Reagan.”

Even newspapers that judged Reagan’s performance less harshly still used the imagery of winning and losing to describe the conference. “Venice is a half victory for Reagan,” said the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.

“It’s not much,” wrote the French financial newspaper Tribune de l’Economie in an assessment of the summit, “but it’s not nil.”

‘Shadow Boxing’

The Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten could see little accomplished in Venice but “shadow boxing.”

This kind of imagery is hard to shed. The Americans themselves, in a series of briefings, have insisted that they won everything they asked for. British newspapers have been estimating how many political points were scored by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher here in advance of Thursday’s election.

French analysts are wondering whether Mitterrand at the summit outmaneuvered and outshone his potential rival for the presidency in elections next year, Premier Jacques Chirac.

Chirac, in fact, left the summit early to make sure that he could attend the French national championship soccer match between Marseilles and Bordeaux on Wednesday night, an obvious campaign maneuver. Mitterrand stayed until the end of the summit but rushed back right after his summit-ending news conference Wednesday so that he, too, could attend the game.

‘Partial Victory’

In Canada, the Ottawa Citizen described the summit as a “partial victory” for Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.

Despite Mitterrand’s feelings, this kind of imagery may help the summits. Even the French president was so discouraged by the 1985 summit in Bonn that he said at a news conference then that he might never attend another one.

But the Venice conference, in the view of many Europeans, demonstrated that these meetings do have a significant use. Europeans believe that the Americans backed down from a very bellicose line in the Persian Gulf when they realized that the other leaders would give them no support at the conference for any declaration that might increase, rather than reduce, tension in the gulf.

The talk about the boxing-match image of the summits came at Mitterrand’s news conference Wednesday. Mitterrand, who, like President Reagan, has attended seven summits, said a great deal has changed since his first summit in Ottawa in 1980. Outsiders thought of these sessions then as more of a meeting of minds than a sports rivalry.

Larger Entourages

But, Mitterrand said, the summits started to grow and become more elaborate after that and leaders began showing up with larger entourages.

“Somehow,” the French president went on, “people in these large entourages feel that they must go out and win something. This leads to the use of an imagery that comes from boxing. It’s as if you must go out and score a knockout.

“This kind of talk,” he went on, “makes these summits seem like events where propaganda runs one step ahead of usefulness.”