Merkel ally backs Juncker for EU presidency: report
(BERLIN) - The speaker of the German parliament, an ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel, backs Luxembourg's Jean-Claude Juncker for European Union president, a press report cited him as saying on Friday.
"If the criteria for choosing the (EU's) first president are experience, reputation, competence and profile, then we don't need to look any further, because nobody meets these requirements more perfectly than Jean-Claude Juncker," Norbert Lammert told Saturday's Frankfurter Allgemeine daily.
Lammert, who is officially Germany's second highest representative, added that the fact that Juncker is not from one of the "EU big powers" counted in his favour.
Juncker, 54, is prime minister and finance minister of Luxembourg and head of the Eurogroup gathering of eurozone finance ministers. He is the 27-nation EU's longest-serving head of government.
This was the first comment from Berlin on who might become the EU's first president, a post enshrined in the Lisbon Treaty, along with a new foreign policy supremo.
EU leaders are to decide the posts at a summit in Brussels on November 19.
Other names being considered include Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy, Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga and former British prime minister Tony Blair.
Blair seems to have met resistance from EU members who believe that Britain has not sufficiently embraced the European project.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said last month that France and Germany would back the same candidate.
Contacted by AFP, a German government spokesman declined to say if Lammert's preference for Juncker reflected Berlin's official position.
"We refuse to take part in speculation," the spokesman said.
Merkel, while ruling out pushing a German candidate for the presidency, has hit out at how lengthy the decision process has been.
"The presidency should be held by a current or former head of government of an EU state. That rules it out for us," Merkel told Saturday's Frankfurter Allgemeine (FAZ) daily in an interview.
"This is another great step for the EU, although I would have preferred a swifter decision."
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