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Daily Mail
June 5, 2014
The European Commission is often said to be a graveyard for politicians who have been rejected by their national electorates.
Jean-Claude Juncker, who was turfed out of office in Luxembourg in December but is now a favourite for the position of President, certainly meets that criterion.
Like so many Euro-Commissioners, including our own Lords Patten and Kinnock, he will get to run things only after having been defeated at the polls — an inversion of the democratic principle.
It may seem odd that yet another Luxembourger should be the front-runner for the post.
There have only ever been 12 Commission presidents, and two have already come from the Grand Duchy, whose population is 0.1 per cent of the EU’s total.
Then again, Mr Juncker knows a thing or two about backroom manoeuvring. Before being brought down at the last election after a complicated scandal that turned on his bad relations with the secret service, he had been Europe’s longest-serving head of government, serving as prime minister for 18 years.
It’s true that, in population terms, running Luxembourg is roughly equivalent to being the leader of Sheffield council.
Still, during that time, Mr Juncker displayed all the characteristics that now recommend him to many EU insiders: keenness to form coalitions; bland views on issues other than European integration; and a readiness to move heaven and earth to support the euro.
Eurosceptics sometimes use the word ‘federalist’ too loosely, to mean ‘someone who supports European integration’. Mr Juncker, though, is the genuine article.
He has campaigned to give EU nationals reciprocal citizenship, including the right to vote at each other’s national elections. He dreams of merging national foreign offices into a European diplomatic corps. He wants the EU to have its own tax system, judicial authorities, military forces and police officers.
David Cameron has already laid his cards on the table — and no wonder — by threatening that Britain could leave the EU if Mr Juncker becomes President, saying that his appointment would ‘politicise the Commission’.
The Prime Minister has had support in this view from Italy, Hungary and Sweden, but this week the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, appeared to slap him down by giving Mr Juncker her backing.
One reason Frau Merkel — who is, of course, far keener on European integration than Mr Cameron — supports Mr Juncker is he has cleverly positioned himself as the candidate most acceptable to all sides.
He leads Luxembourg’s Christian Social Party — notionally the main party of the Centre-Right — but his policy positions would, in British terms, place him firmly on the centre-Left.
He has long championed a Europe-wide minimum wage, common limits on working hours and a bigger role for trade unions.
Many Christian Democrats lean Left on economic issues, of course, but Mr Juncker, more unusually for a Christian Democrat, has also liberalised Luxembourg’s abortion laws and promoted same-sex marriage. All these things make him attractive to the Left, who judge that, if the post can’t go to a declared socialist, Mr Juncker is the next best thing.
Though he is wishy-washy on most political questions, he is militant when it comes to European integration. A disciple of the former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, he played the key role in bringing France and Germany together to launch the euro in the Nineties.
For most of the time that the single currency has existed, he has chaired the ‘Euro Group’ — the association of nations that use it. To British eyes, given that monetary union thus far has turned out to be a disaster, this might not seem a great recommendation; but, believe me, it counts in Brussels.
So far, so typical, you might say. The European Commission is always dominated by compromise candidates: men who nod sagely as others talk, while giving little away. But this time it was supposed to be different. This time, the Commission President was supposed to be chosen by the people.
And, indeed, Mr Juncker claims precisely that. In a somewhat big-headed tweet last week, he announced ‘I won the elections’. Which is, of course, news to most of the people who voted.
