Cameron doesn’t want Juncker to be European Commission president. But would his electorate have been happier with Martin ‘Vote for a German’ Schulz?
Published:
June 1, 2014 at 10:45pm
8 Comments Comment
Leave a Comment
Neither does Angela Merkel want Juncker.
In fact she is determined not to let the European Parliament, which she despises, have any say in the matter. She wants the decision to be made by the heads of government.
Invariably, what she wants goes.
He who pays the piper….
Wrong, she’s backing him.
Hilarious! It has to be a group of drunken English football fans to sing the ‘Ten German Bombers’ song in Germany. Distasteful behavior indeed. But laughs apart, this thing with the English bringing up the WW2 subject at every possible chance they get is getting old. Europe moved on.
Europe moved on, but history tends to repeat itself.
The spitzenkandidaten experiment where the leader of the biggest group in the European Parliament gets to be President of the European Commission has failed.
Many people haven’t even realised that last weekend they were effectively voting for the President of the European Commission as much as for members of the European Parliament.
European leaders should do what they have always done and reach consensus on someone. Europe needs someone bold and reform minded who will convince Britain to stay in the EU and the rest of Europe to stop electing crackpots to its parliament.
Maybe someone less obscure than an EU technocrat would be a good idea..
I vote for Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Thomas de Maizière or Nicolas Sarkozy. Or Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg. That should put some iron in the glove.
Consensus gets us nowhere. Forthrightness does.
Most certainly not. Cameron is displeased with federalist Commission presidents because he won’t be able to renegotiate anything with them.
The British electorate sees both Juncker and Schulz as part of the reviled EU establishment that needs to be changed.
Here Cameron is complaining that the EU he calls “undemocratic” has made a democratic decision he doesn’t like.
Well, if the UK voters still have the mind-set of the half-drunk and half-naked Britons shown in the above clip, it is small wonder that they cannot forego their ‘superior’ isolationist attitude with regard to the EU.
One must not forget that, back in the middle 1950’s it was precisely for previously warring Europeans to come together on economic policies – especially those concerning steel and coal – that the foundations of the modern EU were laid.
I was around at the time and still remember the Coal and Steel Pact being publicized as an achievement towards future co-operation – as against hitherto mortal enmity since at least the late 1860’s – between Germany and France.
I presume David Cameron – for whom I have the greatest admiration, incidentally – is very much aware of developments in Europe as a result of the Treaty of Rome and of the historical evolution that the Common Market brought about.
Is it that the Conservative Party – who, under the leadership of Edward Heath back in 1972 had joined the EU – has forgotten all about the benefits of being part of modern Europe and is pandering to the narrow interests of British industry and banking – and those of the Queen’s subjects rioting wildly on German beer following a soccer game?