Brussels, prepare for Jean-Claude Juncker the juggernaut

Europe insider: Juncker says his appointment as president is ‘common sense’

Joe Murphy @JoeMurphyLondon|Political Editor

27 June 2014

A day after the European election results, Jean-Claude Juncker tweeted grandly: “I am not on my knees before any leader. I won the elections.”

His bombast overlooked one inconvenient detail, which is that his name did not actually appear on a single ballot paper in any of the 28 EU states.

The election-that-never-was sums up the strength and flaws of Juncker, a man who embodies European ambition, but also the EU’s reputation for vainglorious posturing, secret deals and contempt for voters.

He is a classic Brussels insider, a chain-smoking fixer who knows the rulebook inside-out and is always ready to trade concessions behind closed doors.

But his rise has dismayed the professional European Commission officials in Brussels because he is regarded as weak on details and lacking in stamina for 16 hour days, and has a tobacco addiction and tendency to lubricate deals with a glass of wine.

Juncker was born in 1954. His father, a steelworker in Luxembourg’s industrial south, was a trade unionist.

He was prime minister of the tiny state for an astonishing 18 years, resigning after a bizarre scandal involving unlawful bugging by its intelligence agency.

His greatest claim to history was as the chief architect of the euro.

After brazenly denying the existence of eurozone crisis talks after the crash, he loftily declared: “When it becomes serious, you have to lie.” An EU website devoted to satirising Juncker jokes that he is not really arrogant, “it is just that everyone else is stupid”.

A jubilant Juncker mocked David Cameron’s futile efforts to stop his juggernaut earlier this week, saying his appointment was simply common sense “but it seems that common sense is very unequally distributed”.

The Prime Minister has made a potentially dangerous enemy.

Brussels, prepare for Jean-Claude Juncker the juggernaut

Read More