Former EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker addressed the outgoing Chancellor. He expresses admiration, but also tells what annoyed him.
Berlin – Former EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker will miss outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel. “It has done Europe very, very well overall,” said the Luxembourger on Thursday evening in the ARD “Tagesthemen”.
“I will miss her. Because she has this not very common quality in Europe of listening to everyone equally. It paid equal attention to large and small and medium-sized member states, ”said Juncker. “And that distinguished her that she did not make any fuss about her own person, that she did not say:” I as Chancellor of the Republic would like to have this and that “. No, she has joined the circle and towers over it. “
“I admired her very much back then”
Juncker headed the EU Commission from 2014 to 2019 and was previously Prime Minister of Luxembourg for 18 years. “I don’t blame her for what went wrong in Europe. That was not their inability, but the inability of everyone, “said Juncker, referring to current issues in the EU. “I was sometimes annoyed that she needed so long to end up thinking from the end in the present, the immediate.”
It was precisely through this quality that Merkel showed herself to be a stateswoman during the refugee crisis in 2015, because she dealt intensively with the question of what possibly catastrophic effects a border closure could have. “I admired her very much at the time,” said Juncker. “She did the right thing at the right moment because she was the right woman in the right place at the right moment.” Dpa
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