Editorial Board

Jean-Claude Juncker Needs to Go

Jean-Claude Juncker, the new president of the European Commission, was always a bad choice for the job. It's becoming clear now just how poor a decision that appointment was.

November 9, 2014 at 10:59 PM UTC

By The Editorial Board

The Editorial Board publishes the views of the editors across a range of national and global affairs.

There is only one star in this picture.
Photographer: Axel Schmidt/Getty Images

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

Jean-Claude Juncker, the new president of the European Commission, was always a bad choice for the job, foisted on the bloc's 28 national governments by a European Parliament eager to expand its powers. It's becoming clear now just how poor a decision that appointment was.

Juncker was the prime minister of Luxembourg, a tiny nation with a population 1/17th the size of London's, for almost two decades. In that time, he oversaw the growth of a financial industry that became a tax center for at least 340 major global companies, not to mention investment funds with almost 3 trillion euros ($3.7 trillion) in net assets -- second only to the U.S.