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Juncker: No rush for an EU finance minister

EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker | Tobias Schwarz/AFP via Getty Images

Juncker: No rush for an EU finance minister

Commission president’s cautious welcome for Macron’s EU plans.

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The EU is in no hurry to appoint a minister responsible for the eurozone’s finances, one of French President-elect Emmanuel Macron’s grand plans for the EU, Jean-Claude Juncker said Tuesday.

“We need to know what is behind the different elements of the proposal,” the president of the European Commission said, but “an EU finance minister, an idea that I support, does he have the right — under the control of the European Parliament, clearly — to change the national budgets?”

Juncker warned that the EU must move carefully before appointing “a centralized European minister who can interfere with the budget choices of the national parliaments,” adding that “we need to think twice before launching ourselves like a desperado in this jungle, which is a very dangerous forest.”

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The Commission president said another Macron proposal that he likes, a separate budget for the eurozone, seems more likely to succeed. “I support a eurozone budget … but we need to look at the details.”

Another proposal that Macron has backed, a pan-European list that would allow the European Parliament to reallocate the U.K.’s 73 seats in the European Parliament across the bloc, also has Juncker’s backing.

“I am a supporter of this idea, but I would tell you now that it will not be done by the next European elections,” he said.

“I strongly doubt that European political parties are ready to enter this kind of discussion” just yet, Juncker said.

Authors:
Jacopo Barigazzi 

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