Britain can do business with Jean-Claude Juncker, Prime Minister David Cameron declared yesterday after failing to prevent EU leaders giving the Luxembourger the bloc’s most powerful job in a defeat that could push Britain closer to leaving the EU.
Cameron’s loss of an unprecedented summit vote he forced over the next European Commission president sharpened concern that the world’s sixth largest economy may be sliding towards an EU exit. Only Hungary sided with Britain in the 26-2 vote.
The British leader struck a more conciliatory tone during a noisy session of Parliament yesterday, saying he would work with Juncker and did not want to personalise his appointment.
But the Opposition Labour party charged Cameron’s strategy of seeking to reshape Britain’s ties with the EU was in tatters.
“We will now have to deal open and frankly with the new Commission President,” said Cameron, saying Juncker had promised to address the issues of reform that Britain has put on the table.
“We now need to make sure we hold him to that.”
Cameron telephoned Juncker to congratulate him on Sunday and in an article published in Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper earlier yesterday said the two men could have a productive working relationship if Britain’s concerns were recognised.
“If... we can agree that we are not heading, at different speeds, to the same place – as some have assumed up to now – then there is business we can do,” Cameron wrote.
The Conservative Prime Minister has promised to renegotiate Britain’s EU ties and hold an in/out referendum in 2017 if he is re-elected in a general election next year.
The first opinion poll taken after his defeat over Juncker showed a big plurality of voters now want to leave – 47 per cent against 39 per cent who want to stay in the EU.
Having spent six weeks criticising Juncker and refusing to talk to him, the British leader faces the awkward task of trying to mend fences with a man he branded a “career Brussels insider” and the wrong person to head the executive that proposes and enforces EU laws.