EU ‘flicking two fingers’ if Juncker is backed
The former Tory leader said the rise of Eurosceptic parties had sent a “seismic message” and accused heads of government of being “utterly complacent” about the situation.
British Prime Minister David Cameron will risk deepening divisions between the UK and EU by forcing leaders from across the 28-member bloc to vote on the issue at the European Council summit this week unless his counterparts are prepared to consider an alternative candidate.
The move would mark a distinct break from the way that the president is usually chosen, with the nomination agreed by consensus between the leaders.
The prime minister’s decision to oppose Juncker’s nomination looks set for failure, after nine centre-left leaders, including French president François Hollande and Italy’s Matteo Renzi declared their support for Juncker who was nominated by the centre-right European People’s Party.
The party is the largest in the European Parliament, but Cameron has made clear he will “fight this right to the very end” rather than allow the European Council to rubber stamp Juncker’s appointment.
Duncan Smith, a prominent Eurosceptic said: “I was talking to the prime minister the other day and he said there are a load of countries there who share his view on this, they think this is the wrong man, the Italians were saying it, many were saying it, even privately I understand many Germans say it.”
He said Juncker was “by no means a reformer” and backed Cameron’s stance, saying the EU needed to be “roughed up a bit about this”. He told BBC Radio 5 Live’s Pienaar’s Politics: “If they give Jean-Claude Juncker a job this is like literally flicking two fingers at the rest of Europe and saying to all the people out there ‘we know that you voted the way you did but you are wrong and we are just going to show you how wrong you are by carrying on as though nothing happened’.”
Cameron will spell out his concerns to European Council president Herman Van Rompuy in Downing St today, ahead of a two-day meeting of leaders on Thursday and Friday.
Few European citizens would be able to pick him out in a line-up, but Jean-Claude Juncker has been a significant player in the continent’s politics for a generation.
Jean-Claude Juncker served nearly 19 years as prime minister of Luxembourg and was one of the architects of the euro, before finally being ejected last December.
So it is hardly surprising that he is regarded in many quarters — although not by David Cameron — as a natural choice to become the next president of the European Commission.
The 59-year-old is seen as slightly to the political left of the European centre-right mainstream.
The son of a Luxembourg steel worker, Juncker went on to study law and get his first ministerial job aged just 29.
He has argued that his rise would not have happened without protections that helped his father’s job security.
Juncker has also supported a minimum wage across the EU.
However, he is generally held to be a pragmatic deal-maker and power broker rather than an out-and-out ideologue.
He was central to the fraught negotiations over the 1997 Stability and Growth Pact that originally underpinned the eurozone — a fact that hardly recommends him to Eurosceptics in Britain.
In 2005, Juncker was heavily involved in amending that rule book after Berlin and Paris broke the deficit limits.
When the eurozone descended into crisis in 2008, again it was Juncker at the heart of efforts to ensure its survival, from Greece’s bailout to forging a banking union across member states.
The intense work reportedly took a toll on his health, with concern expressed in some quarters about his heavy smoking.
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