JEAN-CLAUDE JUNCKER HAS NOTHING TO BE SMUG ABOUT
MEPs are braced for even more smugness than usual when Jean-Claude Juncker delivers his “state of the union” address on Wednesday. The annual speech to the European Parliament, a tawdry copy of a set-piece tradition in the US Congress, has always been an opportunity for the European Commission president to vainly posture as a leader of the free world on the same level as the incumbent in the White House.
This year insiders expect Mr Juncker’s diatribe to the assembly in Strasbourg to have an extra dose of self-congratulation. Senior Eurocrats believe their federalist dream is reviving.
They believe the victory of the liberal President Emmanuel Macron earlier this year was a sign that the tide is turning against anti-Brussels nationalism. Angela Merkel is anticipated to return to the chancellery in Berlin following federal elections later this month, cementing a resurgence of the Franco-German alliance that has traditionally ruled over the European bloc since its foundation.
EU officials have been relieved to get through the summer without either a severe migration crisis or euro debt disaster. Mr Juncker’s clique appears to be satisfied with the way their sullen intransigence and childish name-calling is stalling the Brexit negotiations.
Wiser heads in Brussels should be counselling the commission president not to crow too much. They know that the single currency’s structural failings and the bloc’s porous borders remain. And the fury from a string of Eastern European governments this week after the EU Court of Justice upheld the legality of the Brussels compulsory quota system for resettling refugees demonstrated the continuing frustration with the bureaucracy’s bullying behaviour. “This decision jeopardises the security and future of all of Europe,” Hungary’s foreign minister Péter Szijjártó said. “Politics has raped European law and values.” The issue is spawning a divide between Eastern and Western nations that suggests further fractures are looming.
Mr Juncker really has no cause for smugness when he rises to his feet in Strasbourg on Wednesday. A truly accurate state of the union speech would admit that his union is in a pretty fragile state.