Juncker slams UK’s Johnson
‘Horror scenario’
BRUSSELS/ISE-SHIMA, Japan, May 26, (RTRS): A top EU official on Thursday called possible victories for Donald Trump and Brexit campaigner part of a “horror scenario” for the world, along with far-right leader Marine Le Pen potentially becoming French president.
The tweet by Brussels’ most powerful civil servant came shortly after EU’s chief executive accused former London mayor Johnson of distorting the truth in trying to persuade Britons to leave the European Union. Both interventions broke with the reserve EU leaders have been showing in fear of fuelling euroscepticism before the June 23 referendum.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker noted that Johnson had lived as a child and later as a newspaper reporter in the EU capital: “It is time for him to come back to Brussels,” he said, “in order to check in Brussels if everything he is telling the British people is in line with reality.
“I do not think so,” Juncker said in answering a question at a news conference during the Group of Seven summit in Japan.
Johnson later rejected the criticism.
Johnson
Hopes
A former premier of Luxembourg, Juncker has joined European national leaders in voicing hopes that Prime Minister David Cameron can keep Britain in the 28-nation EU. But he has warned against EU officials campaigning, saying it may be counter-productive given widespread dislike of Brussels in Britain.
Meanwhile, Juncker’s chief-ofstaff, a discreet but influential German EU civil servant named Martin Selmayr, got a taste of that on social media after his unusually blunt personal tweet from Japan in which he imagined next year’s G7 summit following leadership changes in four of the seven countries at the table.
“G7 2017 with Trump, Le Pen, Boris Johnson, Beppe Grillo? A horror scenario that shows well why it is worth fighting populism with Juncker,” Selmayr wrote after his boss had spoken.
National Front leader Le Pen leads opinion polls ahead of a French presidential election next May; Trump is set to contest the US presidential election for the Republican Party in November; Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi could face a snap parliamentary election by next year and ex-comic Grillo’s anti-establishment 5-Star Movement is running him close in polls.
Challenge
Johnson, meanwhile, is widely assumed to be positioning himself to challenge for the leadership of the Conservative Party and could succeed Cameron in the event of a vote to leave the EU — a result that could prompt Cameron’s resignation.
The tweet by Selmayr, a 45-yearold lawyer widely viewed in Brussels as a hyperactive political operator behind the scenes, provoked dozens of hostile responses on the social media site.
“@MartinSelmayr we are voting #brexit so we don’t have to deal with the likes of you and regain sovereignty - your comments are offensive,” wrote one of the more polite Twitter users, Jase Smale, who calls himself a “proud Conservative”.
Johnson, responding to Juncker’s remarks, told Sky television: “What I am saying to the British people is in line with reality, and if we vote to remain, which I sincerely hope we don’t, then they will go on with measures that will take us further into a federal European superstate.”
The uncertainty ahead of June 23, with opinion polls showing an uncertain, narrow and volatile lead for the Remain camp, has contributed to mounting nervousness in Brussels about a British departure that would deal a heavy blow to the bloc’s cohesion.
Selmayr chaired a meeting of senior diplomats on Monday to a coordinated EU response to a possible Brexit vote.
And Juncker has stepped up his public warnings to voters in Britain, saying last week that British “deserters” would get no favours in negotiations on new trade terms.