Cameron casts doubt on ’federalist’ Juncker

With the EPP returned as the parliament’s largest party, it looks inevitable that Jean-Claude Juncker will become president of the European Commission, writes Europe Correspondent Ann Cahill

IT IS ironic that Britain may depend on “the Luxembourg compromise”, first deployed to allay the fears of a petulant French president De Gaulle, to allow them some cover in their vendetta against Jean-Claude Juncker.

David Cameron’s actions have elevated the former Luxembourg prime minister from that of a cynical response from the EU’s biggest political family, the European Peoples Party of which Fine Gael is a member, to the near inevitable next president of the European Commission.

The 59 year old, who chaired the euro finance ministers meeting through the turbulent crisis that threatened to overwhelm the currency, resigned early from the job as much in a fit of pique when he was crossed by the IMF in his insistence that Greece should be given an extra two years to reduce their debt.

During his 18 years heading up the government of the small Duchy, he oversaw its growth from a political backwater to one of the world’s most successful banking states, whose half a million citizens are among the globe’s wealthiest.

Considered old even at 59, war-worn and tired from too many late nights softened with alcohol and cigarettes, his career appeared to be finished when electors threw his party out of power following scandals involving him and secret services.

While an ally of Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel was not over enamoured partly because of his having the smoke alarms unplugged to allow him appear from behind a cloud of cigarette smoke. More recently the meetings were moved to a room where he could wander onto a balcony, before lighting up.

As a former prime minister and a member of the EU’s largest political party, the EPP, he was always going to be thought of when a body was needed to fill a position. But he had been dismissed as a possibility for the most pivotal role in the EU’s institutions long before it became an issue.

However when the Socialists resurrected the idea contained in the ill-fated Constitution to link the citizens more closely to the selection of the president of the European Commission, and when their member and president of the Parliament Martin Schulz promoted it so successfully, the EPP were left with little choice other than to play along.

The EPP party met in Dublin when there were three contenders for the nomination. The former Latvian prime minister withdrew, but despite pressure the French Michel Barnier who is internal market Commissioner continued to fight and got a higher vote than expected.

It should be remembered that the EPP party is not just made up of those MEPs in the Parliament, but of the leaders of the majority of governments in the EU. It is also the party that Mr Cameron pulled the Tories out of in 2009, depriving himself of the opportunity to influence this most influential body.

Thanks in no small measure to the organising skills of German bureaucrat Martin Selmayr, Mr Juncker triumphed although with a smaller majority than expected. Mr Selmayr has headed up the office of Viviane Reding, the Luxembourg who has been Commissioner for Justice and both are EPP supporters.

Ms Merkel, whose approval appears to be essential for all important developments among the EU’s lacklustre leaders, gave her usual mild support to Mr Juncker, leaving herself with the all important ‘out’. It was expected that in fact Mr Juncker would quietly slip sideways and move across the Rue de la Loi to head up the Council in a far less onerous post.

But, doubtless also thanks to Mr Selmayr’s ambitions for him, Mr Juncker ruled out this possibility with a firm “no” when the final European Parliament results arrived showing that he was indeed the winning “lead candidate” as the EPP had won the most number of seats.

It was of course still a possibility, but the vicious reaction from Downing Street culminating in newspaper headlines declaring Mr Juncker to be the most dangerous man in Europe turned him into a superstar such as the EU has never seen.

Mr Cameron achieved for him as much as ex-Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi did for the other lead candidate for the Socialists, Martin Schulz, when declaring in the European Parliament that he would have done well as a “capo” in a concentration camp. Mr Schulz’s good humour and the horror of others to this reference to a modern, comparatively well thought German, was indefensible.

Mr Cameron’s attempts to put together a blocking minority to prevent Mr Juncker’s selection by the EU leaders at their meeting on Friday has failed. His Scandinavian counterpart Fredric Reinfeldt and his media are also not fans, nor is Dutch premier Mark Rutte. They would prefer Taoiseach Enda Kenny or Danish premier Helle Thorning-Schmidt even though both would be expected to be more acquiescent to Berlin than Mr Juncker.

While Mr Juncker’s main sin according to London is that he is a federalist, as Commission head he will have no say in this. Instead any such moves are more likely to come from the Council representing the member states where many feel that the best way to preserve the nation state within the EU is to produce a kind of German federalism where there is support from the capital, but each is responsible for its own taxes and policies.

He is also less likely to pursue an easily managed or predictable line — while in Germany on his campaign tour ahead of the elections he told the Germans on TV that he favoured eurobonds — something Ms Merkel has shied away from, and while in France he told them they had to sort out their budget deficit — an issue around which President Francoise Hollande is pussy-footing.

And just in case any Commission president could go ‘rogue’, the bureaucrats currently guiding the European Commission are making quite sure the damage will be limited. The plans are for super-commissioners, grouped into clusters with strict responsibilities for the un-super commissioners.

In the end, these few months may be a turning point for the EU where at last the union has found its political demos — not in the institutions, but in the political parties that straddle all states, and whose choice it was to nominate a lead candidate whose identity would be known and who would sign up to the five year policy plan, and who with his or her commissioners would be voted on by the European Parliament.

The job now in Brussels is trying to figure how best to help Mr Cameron dig himself out of this hole.

He and his diplomats have been so fixated at saying what they do not want, they have not said what they might agree to as a compromise — always necessary in a union that depends on reasonably good relations between the members.

The Luxembourg compromise — a gentleman’s agreement with no basis in law — was devised in 1966 after Charles de Gaulle ordered an “empty chair” policy in the EEC of 6 countries then. The compromise meant that a country in a majority vote situation could veto when there was a vital national interest at stake. The then Commission president resigned in protest. This could perhaps give Mr Cameron a few weeks to find a new cause and turn his public around.

He has already spun as a win that he will demand a vote on Mr Juncker. — something all are ready for.

This was used by John Major to stop Belgian ‘federalist’ Jean-Luc Dehaene becoming Commission president, but at that time each prime minister had a veto.

Not so any more when a majority is all that is required.