"I will not be forced to get on my knees before the British" - Juncker

Stephen Tindale, associate fellow at the Centre for European Reform, talks to Voice of Russia UK Radio about relations between David Cameron and Jean-Claude Juncker (listen from 00:42).

“Stephen Tindale, associate fellow at the Centre for European Reform believes that it’s a phone call [from David Cameron to Jean-Claude Juncker] that will never be made: “The phone call is very unlikely to happen. If Juncker does become President, Cameron will take some time to swallow his pride but he will have to because the President of the Commission is a fairly crucial position. There will not be any concessions on the key issues that Cameron is talking about, particularly repatriation of agricultural and environmental policy or the possibility of restrictions on the free movement of labour.”

... Stephen Tindale explains why they think that: “He would not be helpful in keeping the UK inside the EU. He would not be amenable to Cameron’s demands for reform and repatriation, and therefore the hope in Westminster is that Juncker will be blocked by Angela Merkel to keep the UK in the EU.”

... Stephen Tindale believes that it could cause a major problem between the pair: “It will cause another rift. If Juncker gets the job then Cameron will have even more difficulty building alliances within Europe and Merkel of course is the key figure in Europe. He should be working to find areas of common interest with Angela Merkel and that should be on the issue of energy because Germany gets an awful lot of its gas from Russia, so reducing the amount of gas that would both help the EU and it would help Russia in terms of rebalancing the Russian economy away from natural resources towards value added.” ”