Merkel backs Jean-Claude Juncker for European commission president

Merkel backs Jean-Claude Juncker for European commission president

Move deals blow to David Cameron's attempts to block Luxembourg's former prime minister from taking up the role

Philip Oltermann in Berlin

theguardian.com, Friday 30 May 2014 / http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/30/angela-merkel-jean-claude-juncker-european-commission

Angela Merkel has thrown her weight behind Jean-Claude Juncker for the next European commission leader, dealing a blow to David Cameron's attempts to block Luxembourg's former prime minister from taking up the role.

The German chancellor said at the National Catholic Congress in Regensburg: "I will now lead all negotiations in the spirit that Jean-Claude Juncker should become president of the European commission."

Both Merkel and Juncker's parties are members of the European People's party (EPP) bloc, the centre-right group that gained the most seats in Sunday's European parliament elections.

David Cameron, whose Conservative party left the EPP in 2009, as well as Hungary and Sweden's prime ministers have opposed Juncker, lobbying for a more reformist candidate.

In the immediate aftermath of the election, Merkel appeared to have cooled on Juncker as a candidate, failing to state her endorsement and saying that "anything is possible". That she has now had another change of heart may be down to the increasingly critical press coverage of her prevarication in Germany.

The influential tabloid Bild took the unusual step of publishing an op-ed by its publisher, Matthias Döpfner, which described Cameron's opposition to Juncker as a scandal.

"That much is certain: Europeans want Juncker as EU president. [The German candidate of the Party of European Socialists bloc, Martin] Schulz got the second best result. A third, who didn't stand for election, can't be allowed to get the job. That would turn democracy into a farce. You may get away with something like that in the GDR or in far-right banana republics. But not in the EU. Or otherwise it will abolish itself."

The philosopher Jürgen Habermas has also criticised the resistance against Juncker. In an interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, he said: "If this group [the European council] really were to suggest someone else as a leading candidate, it would be a bullet to the heart of the European project. In that case you couldn't expect any citizen to ever involve themselves in another European election again. From a legal and constitutional point of view, I consider such an act of wanton destructiveness out of the question."

Merkel's Social Democrat coalition partners had pressured her to state her endorsement of the leading candidate. The SPD's general secretary, Yasmin Fahimi, welcomed the endorsement, saying: "Anything else would have amounted to a deception of the electorate."