Juncker gebruikt einde EU-voorzitterschap voor felle aanval op Tony Blair (en)

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Outgoing president of the EU Jean-Claude Juncker launched a blistering attack on the British prime minister laying the blame squarely at Tony Blair's door for last week's summit failure.

In an hour-long account to MEPs on Wednesday (22 June), Mr Juncker accused Mr Blair of using false arguments about the scale of farming subsidies and being misleading about the presidency's proposals to try and forge a deal.

The Luxembourg leader said he had not tried to scrap the annual British rebate, over which the summit eventually collapsed.

"It is not true that the presidency wanted to kill the British cheque. We wanted to maintain it unchanged for the 15 old member states but give it greater solidarity with the new member states".

In an indirect reference to Mr Blair who will address the parliament on Thursday morning, Mr Juncker then said "I am telling you this because no one else will and because you are likely to hear other explanations in the future".

He went on to indicate that London had scuppered a deal by insisting that a review of the budget policy concentrate solely on reform of the farm subsidies saying that such a proposal was "impossible because it was unacceptable to other member states".

Mr Juncker also rejected Mr Blair's assertions that seven times more is being spent on farm subsidies than on research and development.

"The CAP is the only real community policy entirely financed by the EU budget. Research is essentially a national budget, supported by the European budget. You cannot compare the two", he said.

He added that combined EU and national level money for research spending would bring the total to 525bn euros, well over the 305bn euros earmarked for agriculture from 2007-2013.

Sniping

Mr Juncker's words, for which he got a standing ovation by MEPs, bring to a head an extraordinary few days of sniping between London on the one side and Paris, Berlin and Luxembourg on the other.

Normally EU presidency handovers are dull affairs with the outgoing and incoming presidencies uttering smiling platitudes about what the one has achieved and what the other is expected to achieve.

But aside from attacking Mr Blair before his presidency has begun, Mr Juncker is also not going to be present at the British leader's presidency debut speech to parliament - another breach of the way things are normally done in the EU.

For his part, Mr Blair will need all his energy and political skill to bring MEPs around to his way of thinking.

Many believe that all London wants from the bloc is a convenient free-trade zone and will be out to make life difficult for the UK prime minister when he takes over the EU helm on 1 July.

However British press report that Mr Blair, far from being cowed by the debate he has sparked, is invigorated believing he can lead Europe ahead on its modernising path.