Wednesday, September 09, 2015

Britain Can Stay ‘In’, Says Juncker, But Then It Should Butt Out

David Cameron and Jean[-]Claude Juncker deep in discussion
THE TELEGRAPH: There was no attempt to sugar the pill in Strasbourg today when Jean-Claude Juncker delivered his 'State of the Union' address

Even when times are tough American presidents always declare the state of their union to be “strong”, or something similarly optimistic, but after a year of near perpetual crisis in Europe Jean-Claude Juncker was past pretending: the European Union, he said, is not in “a good state”.

But if this occasion was a showcase for the European Commission president to lay down a vision for how to fix the continent’s ills, from the recent migrant crisis to the still-wobbly euro, it did not inspire confidence.

Mr Juncker spoke for 90 minutes – an absurdly long time – prescribing “more Europe” as the panacea for everything while being heckled from the upper slopes of the chamber by an assortment of anti-Federalist MEPs, including some from our own Ukip.

As a spectacle, it was risible – but that cannot distract from the fact that Mr Juncker is right about one thing: Europe’s challenges have now taken on an existential quality. » | Peter Foster | Wednesday, September 9, 2015