Cameron’s alliance growing in bid to block Juncker presidency
PRIME Minister David Cameron stepped up his attack on potential European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker yesterday, after getting the backing of the Labour party in his attempt to block his candidacy.
The Labour party confirmed it will not go against Cameron and support Juncker’s bid. The Conservative leader also said yesterday that he disagreed with the process of promoting a candidate through elections to the European parliament.
“As the democratically elected leaders of Europe, we should be the ones who choose who should run these institutions, rather than accept some new process, which was never agreed,” he added, arriving in Sweden for talks with other EU heads of government.
“A two-day meeting hosted by the Swedish Prime Minister [Fredrick Reinfeldt] this week, attended by Chancellor Angela Merkel and Prime Minister David Cameron, is expected to be a key step in the nomination process,” said a BNP Paribas analyst.
The Swedish Prime Minister also came out against the candidacy of Juncker, who is the former Prime Minister of Luxembourg. Reinfeldt adds to a growing pile of government heads who have expressed scepticism about him or the process that made him frontrunner.