歐委會新主席容克日子不會輕鬆
本週二，歐盟議會以多數票選舉前盧森堡首相、歐元集團主席容克為歐盟委員會新主席。德國之聲駐布魯塞爾記者指出，這位來自保守派陣營的老牌政治家將面臨眾多棘手問題。
（德國之聲中文網）歐委會新主席容克以言辭尖刻和異乎尋常的幽默著稱。去年10月，在盧森堡提前大選中，他所在的政黨雖再度成為議會第一大黨，但因缺乏執政夥伴，這位連續擔任了18年首相職務的老辣政治家黯然下場。此前，他已從歐元區集團主席的位置上退下。
容克爾在歐盟議會上獲多數票，被選舉為歐委會新主席（2014.7.15）
所幸的是，他的德國基督教民主聯盟友人—默克爾總理在數天后提議由他出任歐洲人民黨（EVP）在今年舉行的歐洲議會選舉中的首席競選人。容克爾在最新一期《星期日圖片報》上稱，默克爾不僅支持他擔任首席競選人，而且還堅決推進了相關事宜。
其實，默克爾直到今年5月底才公開贊同由容克擔任歐委會下屆主席。直至6月底，在最近一次歐盟峰會上看到英國首相卡梅倫和匈牙利總理奧爾班無論如何都將反對容克後，默克爾才給予了容克以全力支持。
默克爾與容克爾同屬歐盟保守派陣營
本週二，歐盟議員們在斯特拉斯堡就容克的人選問題投票表決。此前，由各國政府首腦組成的 歐盟理事會以26票對2票通過了關於由容克出任下屆歐委會主席的建議。鑑於在歐盟議會中擁有多數的人民黨和社民黨陣營均持支持態度，投票前，各方就確認，容克將肯定獲得通過，問題只是，他在未來的5年任期內在議會到底能得到多大範圍的多數支持。
需有更多女性
目前，容克在女性比例問題上碰到麻煩。迄今，成員國方面只提出兩名女性擔任歐委會委員職務。但是，歐盟議會要求就歐委會領導層內至少應有三分之一女性。來自塞浦路斯的歐委會文化委員瓦西利烏（Androulla Vassiliou）以現任各位女委員的名義要求容克，至少提名10位女性候選人。出於對在議會表決中失利的憂慮，容克將這一要求當作了自己的建議。他要求各成員國政府，將女性派赴布魯塞爾，並許諾，將對這些女性委以重任。他在《星期日圖片報》上表示，議會不會批准女性過少的委員會，他本人也不會同意。
給大家一點甜頭
英國首相卡梅倫堅決反對容克爾
在歐盟議會表決前數天，容克拜訪了所有議會黨團，為本人和自己的計劃造勢。早在選戰期間他就許諾說，他將是一個“妥協機器”。他對議員們說，他意在建設一個更好的歐洲，一個關注就業和社會問題的歐洲，但不會孜孜迄迄於過分的管理。對社民黨人，他 許諾在 歐元區實現債務標準的靈活化。對他自己所在的歐洲人民黨，這位預定的歐委會主席則許諾實施顯然是另一種路線。對不得不痛苦實施財政緊縮政策而對扮演監督角色的“三駕馬車”頗有微詞的南歐諸國，這位老練的政治家則許諾，要徹底改造歐盟、國際貨幣基金組織和歐洲央行構成的“三駕馬車”，要考慮如何讓“三駕馬車”更多一些民主。
英國人拒絕
容克也接觸了對歐洲持溫和懷疑態度或極端批評立場的各黨團。對卡梅倫總理領導的英國保守派，他許諾，將考慮英國關於歐盟必須 改革的願望。卡梅倫在最近的一次歐盟理事會會議上投票反對容克後曾表示，他認為，容克是“代表了昨天的不恰當人士”。容克知道，在歐委會主席任上，他會遭遇來自唐寧街的猛烈抵抗。作為媾和措施之一，容克將安排一名英國人在委員會裡擔任要職。英國媒體在選戰中曾報導他有健康問題、他的父親據稱與納粹有染，這讓他頗受傷害。不過，他仍願意與英國人合舟共濟。
廣結人緣
在過去25年裡，容克參與了歐盟所有決定性步驟的決策。可以說，他是所有歐盟政治家中經驗最豐富的一位。當然，在批評者眼裡，這正好就是他們認為他之所以不適合擔任歐委會新主席的最大原因。不過，他在議會中很善於以自己的魅力和恰如其分的表情動作去征服政治對手。向各黨團人士友好示意、耐心接受采訪，這在他都是駕輕就熟之舉。綠黨議會黨團主席哈姆斯（Rebecca Harms）便稱許說，容克相信自己已為歐盟各機構間的權力之爭做好了準備，“他熟悉內情，沒有任何可讓他意外的東西，歐盟理事會內不會有什麼他未曾經歷過的事情”。
容克爾被認為在歐盟議會和其他領導機構中廣有人脈
容克本人也極力營造良好氛圍，提升歐盟在公民那裡的地位。還在選戰期間接受德國之聲的一次採訪中，容克就曾表示過，歐盟在境外廣受欽羨和讚揚，在境內則全然不是，這一點讓他好不舒服。他強調，正是歐洲創造了和平、建立起了內部市場、引入了共同貨幣—歐元，因此，才受到了世人的尊敬。
本週三，歐盟成員國國家元首和政府首腦將在布魯塞爾磋商歐盟領導機構的其他負責人人选和新歐委會成員的名單。
下屆歐委會定於今年11月1日上任。
作者：Bernd Riegert 編譯：凝煉
責編：石濤
酒鬼當主席 英嗆退出歐盟
德法跑票 卡麥隆跳腳
【陳家齊╱綜合外電報導】「你給我選出酒鬼主席，我們就要退出歐盟！」盧森堡前總理榮克上周五獲得推舉成為歐盟執委會主席人選，英國報章怒對這個歐盟老官僚進行人身攻擊，罵他「酒鬼」、「開會時醉到流口水」。《每日郵報》稱，英國首相卡麥隆氣得把歐盟理事會主席范宏畢「趕出」首相官邸；還說卡麥隆原本得到一些元首支持，但他們後來都改變心意。
《每日郵報》歷歷在目地描述，卡麥隆（David Cameron）上周一把范宏畢叫到唐寧街10號首相官邸，要求歐盟28國領袖在上周五舉行高峰會，選出執委會主席（EU President）人選時，必須舉行正式的記名投票。范宏畢一再回答「我會決定投票如何進行」。一直得不到「好，照辦」答案的卡麥隆，就把范宏畢「請」出唐寧街10號。
稱他國元首會後悔
上周五高峰會投票時，卡麥隆只獲匈牙利總理歐邦（Viktor Orban）一同反對榮克（Jean-Claude Juncker），以2票比26票的懸殊比例慘敗。《每日郵報》說，卡麥隆當場站起身來，從愛沙尼亞、希臘到愛爾蘭，指著鼻子罵過一輪，說他們「有天終會後悔」。據稱，原本德國總理梅克爾（Angela Merkel，前譯莫克）、法國總統歐蘭德（Francois Hollande）等私下都同意榮克不適合該職。
卡麥隆說：「我坦白講，你們全都會後悔。英國因榮克的聯邦派看法不喜歡他。他對英國人民毫無意義。英國人根本不認識他，他又沒在英國競選過。」
卡麥隆說：「我坦白講，你們全都會後悔。英國因榮克的聯邦派看法不喜歡他。他對英國人民毫無意義。英國人根本不認識他，他又沒在英國競選過。」
「會議爛醉流口水」
英國輿論，尤其是民粹主義小報，極度厭惡原任歐元集團主席的榮克，指控他是「歐洲聯邦派」，聲稱他企圖把歐盟集權整合成「歐洲聯邦共和國」，侵害英國的主權獨立完整。榮克提倡歐洲財政整合，推動泛歐盟的銀行管制，可能使英國金融產業受到更多管制。
《每日郵報》稱，曾與榮克共事，要求匿名的英國保守黨前官員說：「過了中午，找榮克根本沒意義，他常常醉到無法做事。我還看過他爛醉到在會議上流口水。」「布魯塞爾（歐盟總部所在地）所有人都知道榮克喝太多了。」
匿名官員還說：「他完全不能勝任工作。我前幾天才跟另一名法國官員談過，他也同意榮克一無是處。」
《每日郵報》稱，曾與榮克共事，要求匿名的英國保守黨前官員說：「過了中午，找榮克根本沒意義，他常常醉到無法做事。我還看過他爛醉到在會議上流口水。」「布魯塞爾（歐盟總部所在地）所有人都知道榮克喝太多了。」
匿名官員還說：「他完全不能勝任工作。我前幾天才跟另一名法國官員談過，他也同意榮克一無是處。」
梅克爾防政敵當選
如此「一無是處的酒鬼」如何變成歐盟執委會主席人選，報導將之「歸功」於梅克爾不想讓政敵舒茲（Martin Schulz）選上主席。然而舒茲6月初就表態支持榮克擔任歐盟執委會主席。盧森堡媒體《盧森堡祕密報》曾報導，榮克可在2小時內「喝掉3杯紅酒，1杯金巴利苦味酒與3杯珊布卡甜酒。」
榮克小檔案
國籍：盧森堡
年齡：59歲
學歷：法國史特拉斯堡大學法律碩士
政黨：歐洲人民黨
經歷：
盧森堡財政部長（1989∼2009年）
盧森堡總理（1995∼2013年）
歐元集團主席（2005∼2013年）
資料來源：《蘋果》資料室
年齡：59歲
學歷：法國史特拉斯堡大學法律碩士
政黨：歐洲人民黨
經歷：
盧森堡財政部長（1989∼2009年）
盧森堡總理（1995∼2013年）
歐元集團主席（2005∼2013年）
資料來源：《蘋果》資料室
It sounded almost like an admission of defeat. Faced with a growing likelihood that Jean-Claude Juncker, a former prime minister of Luxembourg, will become the next president of the European Commission, Britain's prime minister, David Cameron, said wearily on June 17th: "I will go on thinking it is wrong right up until the end"http://econ.st/1jKzEJF
David Cameron calls him unacceptable and illegitimate. Angela Merkel calls him a great European whom she fully supports for the job of next president of the European commission. How has Jean-Claude Juncker become the most divisive figure in Europe?
Jean-Claude Juncker: what is the trouble with Britain's bogey man?
Angela Merkel supports him to head the European commission, but David...
THE GUARDIAN|由 IAN TRAYNOR 上傳
When Europe's leaders gather at a Flanders field next Thursday to commemorate the mass slaughter of a generation of young European men in the first world war, they will want to avoid another battle, particularly one between Britain and Germany.
But the EU summit in Ypres will also struggle to strike an armistice, withDavid Cameron and Angela Merkel, who are locking horns over the vexed question of Jean-Claude Juncker.
The former Luxembourg prime minister has been a less-than-colourful fixture of European politics for more than 20 years, the embodiment of consensus, compromise and coalition-building that is the daily grind of EU deal-making.
Suddenly and surprisingly, at what many thought was the end of a long career at the heart of EU politics, Juncker has become the most divisive figure in Europe. Cameron calls him unacceptable and illegitimate, haughtily scorning Juncker's drive to become the next head of the EU executive in Brussels. Merkel calls him a great European whom she fully supports for the job of next president of the European commission.
Senior diplomats in Brussels say "the die is cast", Merkel has won, Cameron has lost, Juncker's comeback is a fait accompli. It ain't necessarily so.
No commission chief has ever been appointed against the express and robust opposition of a big EU member state like Britain. But there's a first time for everything, and Ypres is a battlefield.
Juncker's office in Brussels is one of the few smoke-filled rooms left in the EU capital. He prefers it that way, as in his study in a modest bungalow in Luxembourg surrounded by voluminous files detailing the post-cold war history of the EU.
When he stood down as Europe's longest-serving prime minister last December in the wake of an intelligence scandal involving Britain's MI6, most thought they had seen the end of Juncker. The Europe fanatic with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the last quarter-century of EU politics was supposed to settle down to memoir-scribbling. Instead, a politician who shuns the spotlight and famously quipped he prefers "dark, secret rooms" will occupy the centre-stage in Ypres and in Brussels the following day.
For the Sun, Juncker is "the most dangerous man in Europe", the son of a "Nazi" – an improbable calumny. For Viviane Reding, a vice-president of the European commission and a Luxembourger who goes back decades with Juncker, the British campaign is nothing short of disgraceful.
"It's a shame, disgusting, low-level, has nothing to do with reality," she told the Guardian. "I'm ashamed and so sorry for what I have seen in the British press."
Juncker, too, of course, has a different story to tell.
"The loveliest European experience I've had was outside the EU, in Ukraine," he told the Guardian in April. "I organised the first summit between the EU and Ukraine. In 1997. In Kiev I took a boat trip on the river Dniepr and asked my Ukrainian colleagues how long it took to get to Odessa. They asked why. Because my father was then a forced German soldier and was wounded in Odessa. The Ukrainian asked me when that was then we cried, because his father was wounded on the same day on the Russian side.
"We tried to bring Europe forward and that's why I still believe in Europe."
The working-class son of a Luxembourg steelworker who studied law in Belgium and France has dominated politics in the Grand Duchy for a generation, as prime minister for 19 years and much of that time also combining the job with that of finance minister. Juncker is a politics junkie. He is not known to have other interests outside politics. He is married, but has no children.
Punching above his weight is an understatement when it comes to Juncker's role in what the EU has become. There are scores of city mayors across Europe running municipalities much bigger than Luxembourg's 539,000 population. But it is behind the scenes in the endless councils, conferences and summits of the EU that Juncker has left his mark. He was attending, and even chairing, meetings of EU ministers as far back as the mid-1980s. Until he quit in December, there was no one at the EU summit table bar Juncker who took part in the Maastricht summit of 1992 that created the euro.
The only politician still in office who can match his involvement in EU politics is Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, who is 12 years older.
It is the single currency, above all, that bears Juncker's imprint. The euro rule book was a mega-battle between Germany and France. It is called the Stability and Growth Pact, stability representing the German fetish, growth describing the French fixation. Juncker drafted much of it, brokering deals and bridging what appeared to be irreconcilable differences between Helmut Kohl and François Mitterrand, between the German and French finance and central bank mandarins.
When the currency Juncker helped to create started to unravel in 2010 under the weight of a ballooning banking and sovereign debt emergency, he played a key role, for better or for worse, in the crisis management as president for eight years of the Eurogroup, the committee of eurozone finance ministers that created the instruments to save the currency and plotted a wayward route out of disaster.
In the process, he bragged that you "have to lie" to succeed in such crisis management. At the height of the Greek calamity in 2011, he hosted a secret meeting of top eurozone leaders. His spokesman flatly denied the meeting took place.
When he stood down as Eurogroup president last year, his successor, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch finance minister, criticised Juncker's handling of the sessions, pointing to his smoking and drinking habits. Juncker denied he had an alcohol problem.
Although he argues for sound public finances, supporting German-style fiscal and budgetary rigour, Juncker is often on the left "social" fringe of European Christian democracy – the centre-right led by Merkel's CDU and long the dominant force in European politics.
He espouses minimum wages across the EU, varied according to country and economic health. He supports a "European" element in national unemployment benefits schemes, aimed at softening the impact of mass unemployment in large parts of particularly southern Europe and especially among the young.
In the case of eurozone bailouts for struggling single-currency countries, he argues for coupling the stringent austerity and spending cuts packages needed to qualify for the rescue with impact assessments on the social costs of the programmes.
Under his long stewardship, Luxembourg became Europe's wealthiest country, one of the richest in the world in per capita terms, as well as a bastion of banking secrecy and a tax haven for multinationals keen to exploit the EU's single market while minimising their contributions to the European exchequer.
"He is a well-recognised statesman, a safe pair of hands," said Reding. "I have known this guy a long time. We were politicians together in the 1970s. This is a man who takes political risks, who makes realities. He is in a long line of people who have been building Europe."
Juncker is no rightwinger. He is, however, a European federalist, one reason the Conservatives maintain he is unacceptable as commission president.
This is a bit odd since, in the continental context, Juncker is in step with rather than out of kilter with the history and the tradition. All European commission presidents have been federalists to greater or lesser degrees. Whoever gets the post in the end is likely to be, too. It goes with the job. Cameron's campaign against the EU's treaty-defined "ever-closer union" is not an obsession shared with the other 27 member states.
Besides, every time Cameron or George Osborne deliver lectures about the need to reform the EU, they insist that the eurozone will need to federalise in terms of political, economic, and fiscal integration if the currency is to recover and succeed.
"Is Juncker more federalist than the other names in the frame? No," said a senior EU official. "Who is more federalist than not? If a main priority in the years ahead is governance of the eurozone, then that needs a bit more federalising."
The main objection to Juncker is less his politics and positions than the simple fact that he has been sitting around European council tables longer than anyone else, that it's time for a change, that he is a warhorse of the status quo, that last month's European parliament elections delivered a massive vote of no-confidence in the status quo and the austerity policies Juncker helped to orchestrate.
For Cameron, as well as for many other EU national leaders, the problem is less Juncker than the way he has become frontrunner for the commission job through a power play by the European parliament which, if successful, quite radically changes how the EU is run and where power lies.
Cameron, and others less combatively, complain that Juncker is being imposed by a parliamentary coup, usurping the prerogative of national leaders to agree on the nomination. It has always been the government chiefs who agreed among themselves, and always by consensus, on who should lead the commission. This time, for the first time, the party groupings in the parliament fought their election campaign with commission chief candidates leading their lists. Juncker headed the list of the European People's party, grouping the EU's Christian Democrats, which won the election.
"If Juncker wins, it will be a victory for the European parliament," said the senior official. "That makes that a federalist turning point."
Strangely, though, Juncker did not run for a parliamentary seat.
Principle and power struggles aside, there is also personal animus. Juncker, who has a sharp tongue and is heavy on irony and self-deprecation, has clashed repeatedly with Britain over the years, rallying opposition to Tony Blair in 2009 when the British politician was mooted as the first president of the European council and also clashing with Blair in 2005 in EU budget negotiations and being sour about Blair's turn at running the rotating six-month EU presidency.
But of the candidates for the job in the election campaign, Juncker was the only one making real overtures to the British. Unveiling his five-point election manifesto in April, his final point was to solve "the British question" by negotiating with Cameron ahead of the in-out referendum in the UK slated for 2017.
But Juncker told the Guardian there had been no contact with the UK government on the matter, a silence that has continued in recent weeks. Juncker and his entourage have been telephoning the British mission to the EU in Brussels pleading for an audience. The UK ambassador, Ivan Rogers, has refused to take his calls. The British insist the only right place for Cameron to discuss this is with other national leaders at the summit table. In Ypres.
"The irony is that around the [summit] table you don't find anyone who's enthusiastic about him," said a senior UK government official. "No government is coming and saying he's the best man for this job at this particular time. This is all happening in a fit of absence of mind. The implications of this have not been thought through."
That view may be widely, if quietly, shared. But it also sounds like an exasperated admission of defeat, that the momentum behind Juncker has acquired an air of inevitability, that the man voted out of office in a small country in December is about to bounce back to one of the most powerful positions in Europe.
It is unlikely Cameron can stop him. Merkel could. As could Herman Van Rompuy, chairing the Ypres summit and trying to solve one of the trickiest puzzles the Belgian has ever grappled with. Failure could be costly, plunging Europe into bitter recrimination and trench warfare just when it needs it least.
Van Rompuy and Juncker are the EU's brace of archetypal fixers, the quiet, clever men in suits who spend their lives mediating between Paris and Berlin, between big countries and small countries.
They are also rivals. There is no love lost between them, although they are of the same political party persuasion and have similar federalist views.
"Van Rompuy will bring to the table what he knows the market can bear," said the senior official. "There's too much symbolism at Ypres. We don't want a fight to the death."
Merkel's olive branch
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, reiterated her support for Jean-Claude Juncker as the European commission's next head on Thursday, but indicated a willingness to consider concessions to Britain, which opposes him. At a press conference with the Danish prime minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, Merkel announced that Germany supported the former Luxembourg prime minister for the job. She also insisted on the need to take all decisions "in the European spirit".
"That implies that we take every member state seriously. That doesn't mean that one can fulfil all wishes, but it means that elsewhere one perhaps can think about what is very important for Britain," Merkel said. She added that she was ready to talk "very constructively" with Britain about issues such as reducing bureaucracy and what issues should be decided by Europe or by nation states.
The Danish prime minister told reporters she supported the candidate who could gather "the broadest possible support" in the commission and European parliament. But she said it was more important to focus on what the EU would seek to do over the next five years. AFP
The Guardian
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