Juncker’s speech sets EU on collision course with Washington
Europe must strengthen the “international role of the euro” and become a more powerful “global player”, European Commission President JeanClaude Juncker said yesterday in his annual address to the bloc’s parliament.
With Brussels and Washington at loggerheads on major issues ranging from the Iran nuclear deal to trade tariffs, Mr Junker said it was time for Europe “to unite all the political, economic and military might of its nations” and strengthen its role in world politics.
Twenty years since it was introduced, the euro is the second most used currency in the world and 60 countries peg their currencies to it. But the recent disputes with US President Donald Trump, who pulled out of the Iran deal and placed sanctions back on Tehran despite strong European opposition, brought into focus the need to boost the role of the euro as means to increase Brussels’ diplomatic power.
“We can and must go further,” Mr Junker said. “It is absurd that Europe pays for 80 per cent of its energy import bill – worth €300 billion (Dh1.280 trillion) a year – in US dollars when only about 2 per cent of our energy imports come from the US. It is absurd that European companies buy European planes in dollars instead of euros.”
He set a deadline to present initiatives strengthening the international profile of the euro before the end of the year.
“The euro must become the face and the instrument of a new, more sovereign Europe,” he said.
Mr Juncker made no direct comment on Mr Trump or US policy, but condemned “selfish unilateralism”. He also identified opportunities to work with China, Japan and others to develop multilateral rules.
Some proposals to strengthen the EU’s effectiveness face an uphill battle against member state opposition, notably scrapping national vetoes in some foreign policy areas, such as where economic pressure from the likes of Russia or China on certain EU countries has blocked EU sanctions to defend human rights.
Mr Juncker renewed calls for states to push ahead in developing an EU defence capability independent of the US-led Nato alliance and to embrace Africa through investment and a sweeping new free trade area – part of a strategy to curb the flow of poor African migrants which has set EU governments at odds and fuelled a sharp rise in anti-EU nationalism. Without naming Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban – whose government lost an unprecedented vote yesterday to launch suspension proceedings from the EU – Mr Juncker blasted EU leaders who sought to undermine democracy and the rule of law. He rejected complaints from politicians that the commission has been lenient towards Hungary, Poland and other eastern states.
The euro must become the face and the instrument of a new, more sovereign Europe JEAN-CLAUDE JUNCKER European Commission President