Juncker’s one-president proposal draws few cheers

Juncker’s one-president proposal draws few cheers

September 13, 2017, Politico

Jean De Ruyt is quoted in a Politico article regarding EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker’s proposal to combine presidencies with Council President Donald Tusk. According to De Ruyt, it is a “logical idea” and has long been discussed in EU circles. The Council president and Commission president “already share around 80 percent of their competences,” De Ruyt says. Such an institutional arrangement, he adds, was first proposed in the early 2000s and backed by Jean-Luc Dehaene, the former Belgian prime minister and vice-president of the European Convention.