In the EU, the Worst Rise to the Top

by Bill Wirtz
Mises.org

As a Luxembourgish citizen who for the first eighteen years of his life has seen one prime minister and one prime minister only, I can tell you that European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker’s tough talk isn’t worth the least bit what the media makes it seem.

Juncker, who was Prime Minister of Luxembourg for 18 years from 1995 to 2013, embodies everything that is wrong with politics as it is: a law-student who never practiced the job, becomes a party secretary in a large centre-right party (the same ideological family as Angela Merkel), gets taken under the wing of the former prime minister, and later commission president Jacques Santer, and ends up serving over 30 years in government.

Jean-Claude Juncker was and is still unbearably popular in the tiny nation that is Luxembourg. When Luxembourg held a referendum in 2005 on the EU Constitution, Juncker made the campaign all about himself by threatening to step down if he would lose that vote.

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