David Cameron in new bid to stop Jean-Claude Juncker

David Cameron in new bid to stop Jean-Claude Juncker

Prime minister will launch fresh attempt to prevent federalist being elected new European commission president

Toby Helm, political editor

The Observer, Saturday 7 June 2014 / http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/07/david-cameron-new-bid-stop-jean-claude-juncker

David Cameron will hold crisis talks in Sweden on Monday with Angela Merkel in a further high-risk bid to persuade the German chancellor to drop support for the federalist Jean-Claude Juncker as the next European commission president.

Downing Street said that the prime minister, who will also be joined by the anti-Juncker prime ministers of Sweden and the Netherlands to discuss the impasse, would be open to new names coming forward, and the idea of a woman taking the job for the first time in the commission's 62-year history.

Juncker, the former prime minister of Luxembourg, was under increasing pressure in Brussels to withdraw in order to prevent the row over his candidacy from pushing the UK closer towards the EU exit door, triggering months of inter-institutional warfare within the EU itself.

Senior officials in Brussels close to Herman van Rompuy, president of the European council who is trying to try to broker a deal and find an alternative, have indicated that they expect Juncker to pull out soon if the dispute is not resolved. But sources close to Juncker denied that he was thinking of doing so.

Merkel, who has strong private reservations about Juncker because he is seen as part of European old guard at a time when the EU needs fresh thinking, is under heavy pressure at home not to give in to the UK's demands and to back the man chosen by the European parliament for the EU's most powerful post.

It is understood that Cameron will use the summit to try to frame the outline of a deal involving not just the job of commission president, but also the portfolios to be given to the UK and other countries for the next five years. The UK is pressing for the job of trade commissioner, according to EU sources.

The prime minister of Italy, Matteo Renzi, whose country is due to take over the EU presidency on 1 July, is also understood to be keen to find an alternative to Juncker.

Two women being cited as possible compromise candidates are Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaite and the Danish prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, who is married to Stephen Kinnock, son of the former Labour leader.

But Cameron's campaign to thwart Juncker, an old-style federalist, is fraught with risk, as Merkel, with whom he has a close working relationship, may not be able to persuade her own Christian Democrat party and coalition partners the Social Democrats, who are also backing Juncker, to change tack.

Swedish prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, Dutch PM Mark Rutte and Hungary's Viktor Orbán are said to be sympathetic to Cameron's cause and keen to build consensus around an alternative.

The explosive issue of Juncker's candidacy is certain to dominate when Cameron addresses a meeting of the Tory backbench 1922 committee in the Commons on Wednesday.

While there is strong backing for the prime minister's stance, some anti-EU Conservative MPs believe Juncker's appointment would help bring home to the public the reasons why the UK should leave the EU. Tory MP Charles Walker, vice-chairman of the 1922 committee, said it would have a positive effect in accelerating a British exit.

He said: "A federal-minded commission president would in my view enhance the no vote and get it out in the 2017 in/out referendum. Jean-Claude Juncker is the best friend of the Eurosceptics and euro-realists.

"I want to see a full and open debate in the runup to a referendum but I want the UK to vote to leave the EU and Jean-Claude Juncker would increase the chances of that happening. You can find a lot people [in the Tory party] who think he will very helpful."

A further problem for Cameron could rear its head this week if the 18 Conservative MEPs join forces with a German eurosceptic party – Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in the European parliament.

Cameron is against the AfD joining the European Conservatives and Reformists group (ECR) largely because an alliance of British Conservatives and German sceptics would infuriate Merkel, whose support he desperately needs in the Juncker negotiations and other talks on renegotiating the UK's terms of EU membership.

The German chancellor was incensed when Cameron pulled the Tory MEPs out the centre-right grouping, the European People's Party, in 2009 and will be even more unhappy to see Tory MPs linking up with AfD, which opposes the euro and EU bail-outs to the poorer EU countries. While Cameron can make his views known, he cannot block AfD's admission to the ECR, as the Tories' 18 MEPs can be comfortably outvoted within the ECR.