Brussels, 16/06/2014 (Agence Europe) - Over the weekend, further support flooded in for the Luxembourg candidate for the presidency of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, with his home country and Austria publicly calling for his nomination to be made official at the summit of 26/27 June.
In an interview with the German weekly Der Spiegel published on Sunday 15 June, incidentally two days after an open letter by the British Prime Minister David Cameron opposing Juncker's nomination, Xavier Bettel, the new prime minister of Luxembourg, argued in favour of a rapid exit from the crisis over the future president of the European Commission, a choice which he hopes will be made on 26 June. “I expect that we will vote by qualified majority at the next Council”, said Bettel (our translation). “Because if we wait several months, we risk an institutional crisis in the European Union.”
This position received the official backing of Austria and its chancellor, the Socialist Werner Faymann. On Monday 16 June, it was Malta's turn to go public with its support for the former president of the Eurogroup. This support is linked to commitments made by the Socialist prime minister, Joseph Muscat, before the elections and on the grounds of which the candidate of the winning group would be the first to try to get a majority behind him or her, his spokesperson explained to the Times of Malta.
According to several media reports, the president of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, may put just Juncker's name forward to the member states at the forthcoming European summit. According to the Volkskrant, Van Rompuy came to this conclusion after talks with a number of European leaders and stated in a report that there was no alternative to Juncker at this point in time. According to Le Monde, an informal dinner of the European leaders in the first half of July may also be held, if Juncker is rejected at the summit of 26-27 June. (SP)