{"id":9202,"date":"2014-06-13T16:11:51","date_gmt":"2014-06-13T14:11:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.devries.fr\/?p=9202"},"modified":"2014-06-13T16:11:51","modified_gmt":"2014-06-13T14:11:51","slug":"cameron-attacks-juncker-european-dailies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devries.fr\/es\/2014\/06\/13\/cameron-attacks-juncker-european-dailies\/","title":{"rendered":"Cameron attacks Juncker"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cameron\u2019s fight to knock out Jean-Claude Juncker<\/a>, a former Luxemburg PM and the European People\u2019s Party\u2019s candidate for the job of the presidency of the European Commission, is getting nastier.<\/p>\n

The British PM\u2019s newest argument is that \u2018Juncker was nowhere on the ballot\u2019. In an op-ed published today in a number of European newspapers (i.a. Le Monde<\/a>, The Irish Times<\/a> and the S\u00fcddeutsche Zeitung<\/a>) Cameron \u2018warns\u2019 the Europeans that we \u2018should look for the best possible candidate\u2019. Read: Anyone but\u00a0Juncker.<\/p>\n

Spitzenkandidat<\/h4>\n

Angela Merkel supports Juncker, but some European Leaders, like the Swedish PM Reinfeldt and his Dutch counterpart Mark Rutte more or less agree with the UK. They suddenly realize that the whole \u2018Spitzenkandidat\u2019 thing was not such a good idea. Cameron even describes it as \u2018nonsense\u2019. Why they didn\u2019t tell this to their voters before the elections is a riddle. What they are really afraid of, is the fact that the European Parliament will get more power. They also fear that\u00a0voting directly for the EC\u2019s president might set a precedent\u00a0for the next elections in 2019, thus making the European Union more democratic.<\/p>\n

[Update 14.06.2014]<\/strong><\/span> According to the French daily Le Monde<\/a>, the current president of the European Council, Herman van Rompuy, has advised the European\u00a0government leaders to back Juncker’s candidacy, isolating David Cameron even more.<\/p>\n

[aesop_map height=\u00bb200″ sticky=\u00bboff\u00bb]<\/p>\n

Whether Juncker was on the ballot or not is not quite as important as Mr. Cameron claims. As a government leader, he is a member of the very influential but opaque European Council. This institution has gained a lot of power since the euro crisis started in 2008. All their decisions are being taken behind closed doors. When the leaders dine together many things are on the menu, except for a dish called transparency. What\u2019s for sure is that during these summits, Cameron directly decides on aspects of the lives of the 508 million EU-citizens. Yet, just like Juncker, he was never on any European ballot either. He wasn\u2019t even on English ballots, except for the one in the constituency of Witney, with 78220 registered voters.<\/p>\n

Pimpled Bride<\/h4>\n

In the most recent legislative elections in Luxemburg, in 2013<\/a>, Juncker received 55968 votes, Cameron on the other hand only seduced 33973 voters (58.8%) in\u00a0Witney<\/a>\u00a0during the last general elections in the UK (2010). Maybe it’s comparing apples and oranges, but if popular votes are to\u00a0be an argument, Juncker has more democratic legitimacy than David Cameron. Being or not being on a ballot doesn\u2019t really qualify or disqualify you as a political leader. All depends on a country\u2019s or an institution\u2019s political system and traditions. Whether this is a good thing or not, I\u2019ll leave that for another debate. In this specific case, however, Cameron behaves like a virgin who realizes the morning after his wedding night that he doesn\u2019t like the pimples on his bride\u2019s nose. Instead of shouting at her, maybe the unhappy groom should show some character and annul the wedding all together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cameron\u2019s fight to knock out Jean-Claude Juncker, a former Luxemburg PM and the European People\u2019s Party\u2019s candidate for the job of the presidency of the European Commission, is getting nastier.\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9206,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[746],"tags":[780,250],"class_list":{"0":"post-9202","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-europe","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-europe","10":"cs-entry","11":"cs-video-wrap"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devries.fr\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devries.fr\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devries.fr\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devries.fr\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devries.fr\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devries.fr\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devries.fr\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devries.fr\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devries.fr\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devries.fr\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}