David Davis writes for The Sun on Sunday: Juncker must be Junked as next Euro President

As published in The Sun on Sunday:
Juncker must be Junked as next Euro President

If we needed a demonstration of the bone headed complacency of the political elites of the European Union, we need look no farther than the campaign to make Jean Claude Juncker President of the European Commission.

He is a protagonist of a European Superstate at a time when the electorates of Europe have risen up against precisely that mad idea.

He is a lifetime politician from a country that seems to have a season ticket on the European gravy train – he would be the third European Commission president to come from that tiny country.

He was a fanatical supporter of the Euro. He was one of its architects, and still thinks it is a good idea, despite the devastation it has wrought on the Mediterranean countries.

Should Mr Juncker disastrously succeed in his bid, there can be little doubt of his unsuitability for the role, lacking as he does any sort of qualifications. His purported achievements to date just do not hold up to scrutiny.

Of course he was prime minister of Luxembourg for around two decades. But remember the Grand Duchy only has a population of around half a million people, smaller than most major cities. Wal-Mart could employ the entire population four times over. To cap it off he was forced to resign after he failed to stop illegal security agency activity such as phone-taps and corruption. So his premiership can hardly be held up as a model of good governance.

Then Mr Juncker was president of the council of finance ministers of the Euro zone from 2005 to 2013. It is now pretty clear that the financial and economic crisis in the Euro zone was worsened by the bungling mismanagement.

Greece, Spain and the other Mediterranean economies are still suffering as a result.

Mr Juncker’s ineptitude was on full display when he organised a supposedly secret meeting of finance ministers to talk about whether Greece could remain in the single currency, and then tried to deny it was taking place when questioned by the press. Mr Juncker was mocked as the “master of lies” for this duplicity. It is preposterous that the master of lies may now become the master of Europe.

Perhaps despite all this he is popular amongst the peoples of Europe. Hardly. Barely one in twelve Europeans even know who he is.

Not that this will concern Mr Juncker. He has made his view of democracy perfectly clear. Some years ago, while discussing the French referendum of the EU constitution, he was heard to say, “If it’s a Yes, we will say ‘on we go’, and if it’s a No we will say ‘we continue’”

So we cannot expect him to treat our referendum with much seriousness. Or our calls for EU reform. The Commission, an organisation that is so incompetent that it has not had its accounts cleared for over a decade, would go on exactly as before under Mr Juncker’s leadership.

John Major has claimed that somehow the Europeans would give us European reforms in exchange for appointing this super-federalist. Whilst he no doubt said this to help a successor PM, there is no evidence that this will happen at all. As head of the Commission Juncker would in effect oversee the drafting of all the laws and policies. Why would he do anything to help us, after we opposed his appointment?

This is a man who is a fully signed up federalist, who was in favour of the Euro because it advanced the cause of those who want to create a European Superstate. Such a state will of course gather more power into the hands of the unelected political oligarchs like him, and take it away from the ordinary voters. Voters like those in Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal, who are suffering austerity and unemployment precisely because of the incompetence and arrogance of the Junckers of this world.

The appointment of Juncker to the Presidency of the commission would be a final slap in the face to such voters, who only a few weeks ago rejected everything he stands for. He will be the human embodiment of the democratic deficit that will one day be the death of the European Union.