Juncker calls for "fighting stupid nationalism" in his farewell to European politics

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Juncker calls for "fighting stupid nationalism" in his farewell to European politics

The hitherto president of the Commission encourages fighting for Europe in a speech before Parliament.

Jean-Claude Juncker, legendary and controversial community leader, on Tuesday made a balance of his mandate at the head of the European Commission , a five-year period (2014-2019) that has crowned four decades of a political trajectory closely linked to the European Union. Juncker, a 64-year-old Luxembourgian, has said goodbye to the European scene with a speech before the European Parliament in which he has encouraged "to fight for Europe and fight stupid nationalism", a phenomenon that during his tenure has spread throughout the Community territory and has crystallized in the first break of the club through Brexit. His years at the helm of the Commission have also coincided with the crisis in Catalonia, which has always maintained strong support for the Spanish constitutional order.

The outgoing president has received the fiery praise from the main parliamentary groups (popular, socialist and liberal) and criticisms of the Eurosceptic formations. "The difficulties he has faced during his tenure could have filled five legislatures and heated them," said Manfred Weber, leader of the Popular group (PPE).

Iratxe García, president of Socialists & Democrats (S&D) has paid tribute to the Europeanism of Luxembourg and thanked her "for ending the austerity imposed by the Commission of José Manuel Barroso ."

From the Unitary Left group, on the other hand, Manon Aubry has reminded him of the LuxLeaks scandal and reproached him for being the leader of Luxembourg, "a tax haven in the European Union."

Juncker himself, with a broken voice on occasion and frequent oral stuttering, has made a modest balance of his management, without fussing or triumphalism. The outgoing president has begun to highlight his "disappointments," which includes, since he has not completed the Banking Union, the failure of the negotiations for the reunification of Cyprus or the stagnation of the negotiations of a new Treaty with Switzerland.

Curiously, he does not mention in that chapter of the passive the immigration policy, "in which the balance is better than one thinks," he said. Juncker attributes to Europe's action "to have prevented more than 760,000 deaths", thanks to its immigration policy . But that policy has also gone through the dramatic situation in the refugee camps in Greece, the dubious containment agreement signed with Turkey or the rupture of the Schengen area (with the reappearance of border controls within the EU).

Among the assets of his Commission, the president highlights the impulse to the social dimension of the EU, the maintenance of Greece in the euro zone (was about to be expelled, at the request of Berlin, in 2015) or the directive on displaced workers (which theoretically guarantees the same salary for the same job, even if the employee moves temporarily from a country with lower pay).

But if there is an event that has marked the luster of Juncker, it has been the referendum of the United Kingdom for the exit of the EU , held in June 2016. The Luxembourg has recognized more than once that he made a "big mistake" to the stay out of the Brexit campaign, as requested by then British Prime Minister David Cameron.

The absence of Brussels in the debate facilitated that Brexit supporters, including the current Prime Minister Boris Johnson, disseminate true truths or complete lies about London's relationship with the EU, without just hearing the contrary arguments.

Juncker said Tuesday that the subsequent negotiation of Brexit "has been a waste of time and energy", a tremendous effort by both parties in the service of a break whose added value nobody seems to glimpse. Brexit, however, is the painful metaphor that sums up the end of a twentieth-century Europe that had one of its last active witnesses in Juncker.

Uncertain relay The transfer of power of Juncker to the new president of the Commission, the German Ursula von der Leyen , was scheduled for November 1, but has had to be postponed by the rejection of three of the future commissioners in the European Parliament.

The relay could occur on December 1, at the earliest. But since Tuesday, Juncker has begun to enter the history of the European Union, where he can aspire to rub shoulders with some of the most representative figures of a club that has shaped the post-war and cold war Europe and is fighting for Survive in the era of a hot peace with the USA.

Juncker has lived a good part of that history on the front line, since in 1982 he opened in an EU Council of Ministers (employment) until he became almost 40 years later the only European leader who has managed to appease the president of the United States, Donald Trump , and tear a truce in the transatlantic trade war that seemed imminent last year.

His startup at the head of the Commission could not be more unfortunate. Just 72 hours after taking office on November 1, 2014, the papers of Luxleaks were published , a journalistic investigation that revealed the tax advantages granted in secret by Luxembourg to hundreds of multinationals, with Juncker as prime minister and finance minister of the country .

The tremendous barrage shook the political foundations of Juncker, who heard resignation requests. He endured as president of the Commission and responded by launching the Competition Commissioner, Margrethe Vestager , on the hunt for tax agreements such as those in Luxembourg in other countries, in particular, the Netherlands, Belgium and Ireland.

Weakened by the coup, Juncker's enemies reaffirmed their idea that he was the wrong person to lead the Commission in such a delicate period for Europe. And many of his supporters also sensed that the Luxembourgian had arrived too late on the cusp of the Union, a position he had cherished several times since 1994 and that for his own or others' reasons he had always escaped.

His European star was even about to go out definitively in 2013, when he lost the presidency of the Eurogroup (ministers of Economy and Finance of the euro zone) and ceased to be Luxembourg's prime minister (after 18 uninterrupted years) due to an espionage scandal . Juncker's first withdrawal, however, was brief.

Against all odds, in 2014 he became the candidate of the European People's Party (PPE) for the presidency of the European Commission. An experiment, that of attending European elections with party heads for the presidency of the community body, in which almost no one believed. Juncker also had powerful enemies.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who visibly dislikes the habits of a Juncker who smokes and drinks, did not hide her little enthusiasm for the candidate. And Cameron and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, representatives of nationalism and Euroscepticism that Juncker detests, also tried to curb his arrival in Brussels. But Juncker got ahead and was elected by the European Parliament president of the Commission .

Juncker arrived at the end of his career at the top of the EU, from one of the smallest countries in the club (although he always emphasizes that it is called "Grand Duchy") and a proletarian extraction family (his father was a worker in the steel industry).

The immense footprint of the Luxembourgian in community policy is evident to forofos and critics. Its name frequently splashes almost all the memories published by the protagonists of the European agenda of the last half century. The former president of the Commission, Jacques Delors, attributes the first guidelines on employment that were adopted at European level or the magic formula of "opting-out", which allowed the United Kingdom to leave the United Kingdom of the Monetary Union and facilitated the birth of the euro. He is also credited, curiously, with the proposal to suppress unanimity in the appointment of the president of the Commission, a providential change that allowed him to avoid the veto of Cameron and Orbán.

Juncker leaves now with the purpose of giving him also his written version of four decades of avatars in Europe. Imagine that these pages will pay tribute to the German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, one of his most admired friends on the European scene. But more juicy the story of the worries or setbacks because Juncker says he has written down in a notebook all the people with whom he has a pending account. And after forty years in the front row, the list must be almost as extensive as the legacy of one of the great protagonists of recent EU history.

https://elpais.com/internacional/2019/10/22/actualidad/1571739103_408111.html

**Juncker calls for "fighting stupid nationalism" in his farewell to European politics** The hitherto president of the Commission encourages fighting for Europe in a speech before Parliament. Jean-Claude Juncker, legendary and controversial community leader, on Tuesday made a balance of his mandate at the head of the European Commission , a five-year period (2014-2019) that has crowned four decades of a political trajectory closely linked to the European Union. Juncker, a 64-year-old Luxembourgian, has said goodbye to the European scene with a speech before the European Parliament in which he has encouraged "to fight for Europe and fight stupid nationalism", a phenomenon that during his tenure has spread throughout the Community territory and has crystallized in the first break of the club through Brexit. His years at the helm of the Commission have also coincided with the crisis in Catalonia, which has always maintained strong support for the Spanish constitutional order. The outgoing president has received the fiery praise from the main parliamentary groups (popular, socialist and liberal) and criticisms of the Eurosceptic formations. "The difficulties he has faced during his tenure could have filled five legislatures and heated them," said Manfred Weber, leader of the Popular group (PPE). Iratxe García, president of Socialists & Democrats (S&D) has paid tribute to the Europeanism of Luxembourg and thanked her "for ending the austerity imposed by the Commission of José Manuel Barroso ." From the Unitary Left group, on the other hand, Manon Aubry has reminded him of the LuxLeaks scandal and reproached him for being the leader of Luxembourg, "a tax haven in the European Union." Juncker himself, with a broken voice on occasion and frequent oral stuttering, has made a modest balance of his management, without fussing or triumphalism. The outgoing president has begun to highlight his "disappointments," which includes, since he has not completed the Banking Union, the failure of the negotiations for the reunification of Cyprus or the stagnation of the negotiations of a new Treaty with Switzerland. Curiously, he does not mention in that chapter of the passive the immigration policy, "in which the balance is better than one thinks," he said. Juncker attributes to Europe's action "to have prevented more than 760,000 deaths", thanks to its immigration policy . But that policy has also gone through the dramatic situation in the refugee camps in Greece, the dubious containment agreement signed with Turkey or the rupture of the Schengen area (with the reappearance of border controls within the EU). Among the assets of his Commission, the president highlights the impulse to the social dimension of the EU, the maintenance of Greece in the euro zone (was about to be expelled, at the request of Berlin, in 2015) or the directive on displaced workers (which theoretically guarantees the same salary for the same job, even if the employee moves temporarily from a country with lower pay). But if there is an event that has marked the luster of Juncker, it has been the referendum of the United Kingdom for the exit of the EU , held in June 2016. The Luxembourg has recognized more than once that he made a "big mistake" to the stay out of the Brexit campaign, as requested by then British Prime Minister David Cameron. The absence of Brussels in the debate facilitated that Brexit supporters, including the current Prime Minister Boris Johnson, disseminate true truths or complete lies about London's relationship with the EU, without just hearing the contrary arguments. Juncker said Tuesday that the subsequent negotiation of Brexit "has been a waste of time and energy", a tremendous effort by both parties in the service of a break whose added value nobody seems to glimpse. Brexit, however, is the painful metaphor that sums up the end of a twentieth-century Europe that had one of its last active witnesses in Juncker. Uncertain relay The transfer of power of Juncker to the new president of the Commission, the German Ursula von der Leyen , was scheduled for November 1, but has had to be postponed by the rejection of three of the future commissioners in the European Parliament. The relay could occur on December 1, at the earliest. But since Tuesday, Juncker has begun to enter the history of the European Union, where he can aspire to rub shoulders with some of the most representative figures of a club that has shaped the post-war and cold war Europe and is fighting for Survive in the era of a hot peace with the USA. Juncker has lived a good part of that history on the front line, since in 1982 he opened in an EU Council of Ministers (employment) until he became almost 40 years later the only European leader who has managed to appease the president of the United States, Donald Trump , and tear a truce in the transatlantic trade war that seemed imminent last year. His startup at the head of the Commission could not be more unfortunate. Just 72 hours after taking office on November 1, 2014, the papers of Luxleaks were published , a journalistic investigation that revealed the tax advantages granted in secret by Luxembourg to hundreds of multinationals, with Juncker as prime minister and finance minister of the country . The tremendous barrage shook the political foundations of Juncker, who heard resignation requests. He endured as president of the Commission and responded by launching the Competition Commissioner, Margrethe Vestager , on the hunt for tax agreements such as those in Luxembourg in other countries, in particular, the Netherlands, Belgium and Ireland. Weakened by the coup, Juncker's enemies reaffirmed their idea that he was the wrong person to lead the Commission in such a delicate period for Europe. And many of his supporters also sensed that the Luxembourgian had arrived too late on the cusp of the Union, a position he had cherished several times since 1994 and that for his own or others' reasons he had always escaped. His European star was even about to go out definitively in 2013, when he lost the presidency of the Eurogroup (ministers of Economy and Finance of the euro zone) and ceased to be Luxembourg's prime minister (after 18 uninterrupted years) due to an espionage scandal . Juncker's first withdrawal, however, was brief. Against all odds, in 2014 he became the candidate of the European People's Party (PPE) for the presidency of the European Commission. An experiment, that of attending European elections with party heads for the presidency of the community body, in which almost no one believed. Juncker also had powerful enemies. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who visibly dislikes the habits of a Juncker who smokes and drinks, did not hide her little enthusiasm for the candidate. And Cameron and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, representatives of nationalism and Euroscepticism that Juncker detests, also tried to curb his arrival in Brussels. But Juncker got ahead and was elected by the European Parliament president of the Commission . Juncker arrived at the end of his career at the top of the EU, from one of the smallest countries in the club (although he always emphasizes that it is called "Grand Duchy") and a proletarian extraction family (his father was a worker in the steel industry). The immense footprint of the Luxembourgian in community policy is evident to forofos and critics. Its name frequently splashes almost all the memories published by the protagonists of the European agenda of the last half century. The former president of the Commission, Jacques Delors, attributes the first guidelines on employment that were adopted at European level or the magic formula of "opting-out", which allowed the United Kingdom to leave the United Kingdom of the Monetary Union and facilitated the birth of the euro. He is also credited, curiously, with the proposal to suppress unanimity in the appointment of the president of the Commission, a providential change that allowed him to avoid the veto of Cameron and Orbán. Juncker leaves now with the purpose of giving him also his written version of four decades of avatars in Europe. Imagine that these pages will pay tribute to the German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, one of his most admired friends on the European scene. But more juicy the story of the worries or setbacks because Juncker says he has written down in a notebook all the people with whom he has a pending account. And after forty years in the front row, the list must be almost as extensive as the legacy of one of the great protagonists of recent EU history. https://elpais.com/internacional/2019/10/22/actualidad/1571739103_408111.html

[–] [deleted] • 2 pts

The EU really wants to wipe out the individual slates, that don't ashare a common language and each have many hundreds of years of unique culture? That's a very foolish outlook, that is not likely to happen. They need to embrace nationalism instead, or watch as the EU splits back into its individual components anyway.

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