Touchy-feely Juncker behaving ‘like medieval king’
JEAN-CLAUDE JUNCKER has been accused of “behaving like a medieval king” after footage emerged of him tousling a female aide’s hair and kissing two others on his arrival at last week’s EU summit.
Baroness Jenkin, a Tory peer who campaigns for more women to enter politics, said she was “astonished” that the European Commission president considered his actions appropriate.
Emma Little-Pengelly, a Democratic Unionist Party MP described his behaviour as “utterly bizarre”.
The footage emerged as a separate clip showed Mr Juncker later holding Theresa May’s arm as she berated him for apparently calling her Brexit demands “nebulous”.
In the separate clip of Mr Juncker’s arrival at the summit he is seen greeting Pernilla Sjölin, the commission’s deputy chief of protocol, by tousling the back of her hair. Still in front of a camera filming his arrival, he then walked over to kiss another member of staff, who briefly appeared reluctant to offer her cheek, before then doing so. He then kissed a third aide who briefly put her arm around his shoulder.
Yesterday Baroness Jenkin, 63, told The Sunday Telegraph: “He is a year older than me. It is just astonishing that he thinks that kind of behaviour is appropriate. He is behaving like a sort of
‘I just don’t see how anybody can think it’s appropriate. We can overdo some of these things, but I am staggered’
medieval king at court. I just don’t see how anybody can think it’s appropriate. We can overdo some of these things but I am staggered by it.”
Mr Juncker has previously been pictured slapping the faces of male EU leaders as a form of greeting.
The 64-year-old has long faced accusations, which have been strenuously denied, of heavy drinking. In July his spokesman said he was suffering from an “attack of sciatica” when a video showed him stumbling and repeatedly needing assistance from fellow leaders at a Nato event.
Questioned about his drinking in a 2016 interview during which he drank four glasses of champagne over lunch, Mr Juncker told a French journalist: “You can forgive a politician for anything, except alcoholism. The accusation really makes me sad and it has even led my wife to question if I lie to her, as I do not drink when I’m at home.”
On Friday, in an exchange picked up by a camera, Mrs May accused the Mr Juncker of calling her “nebulous”, clearly taking offence after he criticised her performance at a summit in Brussels. Mr Juncker told her she was wrong, and later claimed she had backed down and “was kissing me”.
“I have the highest respect for the British Prime Minister,” Mr Juncker said.