16 February 2018

Deutsche Welle: EC President Juncker defends system against French calls for reform

"Some in British political society are against the truth, pretending that I am a stupid, stubborn federalist, that I am in favor of a European super-state," Juncker told a news conference in Brussels. "I am strictly against a European super-state. We are not the United States of America ... This is total nonsense." [...]

His comments have been seen as a thinly-veiled criticism of French President Emmanuel Macron and his newly-formed Republique En Marche party which has not yet declared which EU grouping it will join. "It’s totally possible to set up your own group and I believe that European reformists have a vocation to federate around them other movements," Macron said in Paris this week.

"Europe would gain from a political revamp... which is both possible and desirable if we want to give a clear mandate to the commission," Macron told reporters. He accused the EU leadership of being ideologically incoherent with "fundamental differences" within the political groupings of the conservative EPP, the social democratic S&D and the liberal ALDE.

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