Britain, France get top jobs from EU's Juncker

Yahoo – AFP, Danny Kemp, 10 Sep 2014

Former French Finance Minister and France’s representative on the next

 European Commission , Pierre Moscovici briefs Greek and foreign journalists at

the French embassy in Athens on August 27, 2014 , after his talks with the Greek

government (AFP Photo/Louisa Gouliamaki )

Brussels (AFP) - France and Britain won powerful positions Wednesday in the new European Commission led by Jean-Claude Juncker, who vowed to revive a stagnant economy, rebuild trust in Brussels and deal with threats on the EU's borders.

Former finance minister Pierre Moscovici overcame doubts about France's finances to be named economic affairs commissioner, one of the most coveted jobs in the new regime that will run the European Union for the next five years.

Britain, whose place in the EU is under threat from a surge in euroscepticism at home, surprisingly won the financial services post it wanted for its nominee Jonathan Hill, the former head of Britain's House of Lords.

European Commission president-elect

 Jean-Claude Juncker arrives to attend an

 EU summit at the EU headquarters in Brussels

 on August 30, 2014 (AFP Photo/Thierry Charlier)

But gains for older European powers was balanced by a posts for eastern member states in a new squad of so-called super commissioners who will oversee huge policy areas.

"I am convinced it will be a winning team," said former Luxembourg prime minister Juncker, who replaces Portugal's Jose Manuel Barroso.

"This commission has the expertise you need to tackle the economic and geostrategic challenges Europe is facing."

The 28-member team -- one for each EU country -- must be approved by the European Parliament before starting work in November.

As the EU's executive branch, the Commission drafts laws and polices national budgets for more than half a billion people across a bloc that is the world's biggest economy when taken together.

But it faces a raft of problems including a stalling economy, deflation and unemployment, plus the crisis in Ukraine on its eastern borders.

Super-commissioners

Germany's Guenther Oettinger was named as digital economy commissioner, Denmark's Margrethe Vestager is competition commissioner and Sweden's Cecilia Malmstroem gets trade, a job that involves fraught negotiations for a vast trade deal with the United States.

Spain's Miguel Arias Canete got the energy and climate post, a key job with the Ukraine crisis threatening gas supplies from Russia, but faces opposition from environmental groups over his role in two oil companies.

The powerful post of EU diplomatic chief went to Italian Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini at the end of August.

Juncker's new line-up, which includes four former prime ministers and several former finance ministers, is dominated by the European centre-right political group that he is a part of.

The announcement followed months of behind-the-scenes horse-trading in Brussels, with German-backed austerity hawks up against the likes of Paris and Rome, who want to ease EU rules on public spending to give greater leeway to boost economic growth.

The socialist Moscovici in particular overcame reservations from Berlin about France's ability to meet key EU budget rules, with his appointment coming on the day that France said it would miss its deficit targets by two years.

Moscovici told reporters in Brussels: "The rules, that's my job."

Hill's post meanwhile appeared to be an olive branch to Britain, which is set to hold a referendum in 2017 on its EU membership.

A view of European flags at the European Commission headquarters at the

 Berlaymont Building in Brussels, during the federal, regional and European elections

 in Belgium, on May 25, 2014. Britain and France on Sept 10 win top jobs in new

 EC executive (AFP Photo/Siska Gremmelprez)

London wanted the post as its financial services industry is a key sector of the British economy, despite concerns from other members which want to see the City more tightly regulated.

'Shake things up'

But Juncker pointedly said Hill and Moscovici would in effect be overseen by two hawkish "super commissioners" -- Finland's Jyrki Katainen, who will cover jobs and growth, and Latvia's Valdis Dombrovskis, in charge of the euro.

Cracking jokes in a mixture of French, German and English -- with a dash of Luxembourgish and Bulgarian -- Juncker said a key task for his new team was winning back disillusioned voters who swung towards eurosceptic parties in European Parliament elections in May.

He said he had decided to "shake things up a bit" with his plans for the seven vice presidents who would work with the Commissioners to ensure policy was well coordinated and more easily understandable to EU citizens.

One of these, Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans, "will be my right hand man" as his first vice president, focusing on regulation.

Juncker added that it had been a "real challenge" to find the nine women candidates the European Parliament had demanded if it was to approve the new Commission.

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"The End of History" Nov 20, 2010 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll)

" ...The Mold is Set - Unity Works (Europe)

Let's talk about Europe - Eastern and Western Europe. Look at the history. I want you to look at the history of the Europeans. What do you know about them? What did you study in school about them, American? You had to learn all those dates and facts. You sit in a country that's barely 200 years old and you had to memorize all the battles and all those conquerors and all those army specifics for hundreds of years! Fourteen hundreds, 1300s - all the way to the present century they seemed to be conquering each other on a regular basis. They warred with each other like the tides of the ocean, constant and predictable. When they got tired of that, they conquered other continents. The small country of Spain alone is responsible for conquering all of South America, middle America and well up into North America. Millions today are speaking their language who never did before they arrived.

The armies of Napoleon spread across parts of Europe like water flowing in a river, conquering everything in its path. There are some cities today in Europe that still don't know which country they belong to! This is because their borders kept changing so often! Now, that's history. I want you to look at it carefully. Still, there would be those who say, "This is just what men do. They create borders and cultures and they go to war. That's Human nature."

Fifty years ago, this new energy started to arrive. Oh, the alignments go slow, dear Human Being, but it was here. It was starting; it was beginning. Fifty years ago, something happened in Europe and you didn't hear much about it back then. Some very clear thinkers got together after World War II and said, "If we don't do something different and out of the box of today's thinking, it's all going to happen again because this is what we do. Men make war." Even the young country called America was involved in war. America itself almost split apart before that, because that's what men do. They split good things apart. It was obvious to these wise men that they could try something, something that might work - a uniting instead of separation. And so they formed an idea. Let me tell you what it was.

They said to themselves, "What if we could get as many countries as we can to agree to become a collection of 'country states'? If we start this now and go at it slowly, we could eventually have a system where we would trade together to the point where the borders come down, no checkpoints and no passports. All these cultures and former enemy countries would all trade evenly together, and for that to happen we might even have a common currency. Look at the United States, for this is how it works there. Europe would never go to war with itself again. It couldn't, since it would be allied financially."

Of course, they were laughed at! Everyone who heard it said it couldn't' be done and that there were just too many issues to solve. Those who objected said, "No, no, no. That's not what we do. We have too many different cultures. There's some with strong currencies, there's some with weak currencies. There are too many objections. Imagine going from one country to another without being inspected at the border? That won't work. Who are you to suggest something of this nature?" And the forward thinkers said, "We are unifiers. And we think it's a good idea so we will have strength and will never war again." That was two generations ago, 50 years.

Today, you have the European Union of States. There are more all the time, way past the original number of countries. Some are "standing in line" to be accepted! The borders are gone and the checkpoints are missing and the currency called the Euro is the strongest currency on Earth - stronger even than yours [the USA]. Now, let me tell you what did that. It's a consciousness shift that even 50 years ago was developing. Through two generations, it slowly allowed for free thinkers to unify things that had never been unified before. The result? These countries will never conquer each other again, because "history" ended at that moment. They started a new paradigm for Europe and one that has no historic profile known to man. The old history of the area is gone, and it will not repeat itself.

Those in the old Eastern Bloc of Europe, where there is still to this day very little unity, will still say, "History will again repeat itself. We are victims of it. It's only a matter of time." But not all of them feel this way. There are some who are starting to feel a unity of spirituality within their own cultures that they were never allowed to speak of before. So they are free thinking, out of the box of the old paradigm. It's new.

There are those who are standing on podiums and in pulpits and are proclaiming, "History is ended. It's the end of suffering. It's the end of dictatorships. It's the end of those who would put us in a low place. Instead, it's the beginning of discovering who we are." And although they don't say it in these exact words, they are discovering the creator inside - that which is the unity of God. So it's a full circle back to what the Angel told Muhammad, isn't it? For unity was the key to peace, and still is. It is a sacred principle and will never change.

Who would have thought this would have happened? The United States is what it is because 200 years ago the founders said, "Let us make a group of state countries without physical borders in a system that's never been tried. It's one of unity - the UNITED States of America." Oh, it had its tests, but the unifiers won. And it is why this country is what it is and is seen and respected for what it is and for what it's done. So young, it is, but representing the new energy, it is. ..."