The announcement last weekend from Jyrki Katainen, Finland’s centre-right prime minister, that he will step down in the summer to seek a post in the EU institutions has not exactly burnished the candidacy of Jean-Claude Juncker.
Although Juncker is the official nominee of the centre-right European People’s Party for the presidency of the European Commission, many have regarded him as simply a placeholder.
Katainen has not been specific about his ambitions, though he told Finnish journalists on Sunday that he supported Juncker’s candidacy. Still, there are some who suspect that he is after the Commission presidency, or possibly the presidency of the European Council – though that too is a position that Juncker said he was ready to contemplate. Katainen may also be interested in heading the Eurogroup of eurozone finance ministers.
How to put this tactfully? Katainen has experience – he was finance minister for four years from April 2007 to June 2011, and then became prime minister – but he is only 42. Juncker, on the other hand, is 59, having spent almost 19 years as prime minister of Luxembourg. He is of a different generation.
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? Finland is effectively without a European commissioner at present, because Olli Rehn this week went on leave for the duration of the European Parliament election campaign. Although Rehn was thwarted by Guy Verhofstadt in his bid to become the candidate of the Liberal group (ALDE) for the Commission presidency, he is still hoping for a significant European position. Becoming an MEP and securing the chairmanship of the Parliament’s economic and monetary affairs committee is one possibility.