From top: Jean Claude Juncker as seen by the Daily Telegraph‘s Patrick Blower and Mr Juncker’s state of the union speech delivered yesterday
Yesterday.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker delivered his annual State of the Union speech.
Readers should note that, on RTÉ’s Six One last night, Tony Connolly reported:
“I think people will be going through his speech quite carefully. I mean, look, he says he’s not an integration fanatic and his underlying theme today was he wants a Europe of freedom, of equality, of opportunity and the rule of law.
“And you could see where he was trying to balance, perhaps more ambitious roles for Europe with things that would really chime with public opinion – creating jobs, developing the digital agenda, protecting people against terrorism, having greater intelligence sharing among member states.
“Issues like migration, he said, obviously Europe had a responsibility to show solidarity with the downtrodden from other parts of the world. But, balancing that, by saying if you were an illegal migrant and you had lost your right to stay, then you should be sent home.
“I think the Irish Government will be looking very carefully at this idea of dropping the veto on any corporate tax legislation, a very sensitive issue for Ireland. It was in the written speech and it was dropped from the delivery.
“Now I’m led to believe that the delivery is what counts but the fact that he was kind of putting it out there, in the written speech, will raise some questions.
Nationalism sold as democratic progressive economic globalisation
The EU must be thanking their lucky stars over Brexit making them look half-way competent, like the sigh of relief of someone who has four pints in them approaching a Garda check point when the person in front of them floors it because they’ve had a bottle of whiskey.
You can’t run full employment when your central bank has a 2% inflation target, you can’t invest if there is a set limit on deficit spending, freedom, equality of opportunity and rule of law are fundamentally incompatible concepts, and if you follow your positive sentiments about migrants and lip service over a humanitarian crisis with a ‘but’*…
*Note: Illegal immigration is perfectly congruent with neoliberalism (granted the economic ethos of the German dominated EU is more ordo-liberal, but I haven’t read any books on that), the key is they stay illegal and so take in below minimum wage and can’t avail of social services. -> http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2008/06/11/milton-friedmans-argument-for-illegal-immigration/
“Now I’m led to believe that the delivery is what counts but the fact that he was kind of putting it out there, in the written speech, will raise some questions.”
Don’t worry, everyone. A right wing regular here told me that the French and Germans can sing all they like about our corpo tax rate because rules are rules so they won’t be able to do anything about it. Everyone respects rules, especially the uber powerful.
Lots of ‘I’ for a report. Should say Tony opined not reported from Brussels