As Britain’s David Cameron and Germany’s Angela Merkel have wrangled publicly over whether Jean-Claude Juncker should head the EU’s executive arm, another voice has been notable mainly for its absence: that of France, reports The Financial Times.
This reticence is striking given France’s traditional pre-eminence as a political driving force in the EU.
President François Hollande has played a background role in the Juncker saga, in stark contrast to the constant hyperactivity displayed by his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, during the eurozone crisis.
Mr Hollande has talked to the British prime minister “to see if he can help”, says a senior official at the Elysée Palace. “But Cameron offers no opening except ‘let’s get rid of Juncker’, which is not so easy to do.”
As a Socialist, Mr Hollande holds no particular candle for Mr Juncker, former Luxembourg prime minister and the candidate of the centre right. But he has accepted the privilege of the centre-right – by virtue of its victory in the European parliamentary election in May – to lay claim to the top job at the European Commission.
As the Elysée official remarked, it is hard for a Socialist president of France to come up with a solution for a British conservative prime minister fighting with his own political allies.
Read more of this report from The Financial Times.