Juncker: EU Should Have ‘Interfered’ in Brexit Vote to ‘Destroy’ Leave ‘Lies’

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker gestures as he speaks during a press con
ERIC VIDAL/AFP/Getty Images
Virginia Hale

The European Commission chief has said he regrets not intervening in Britain’s 2016 EU referendum, claiming Brussels could have ‘destroyed the lies’ which supposedly led to Brexit.

Speaking in the Belgian capital on Monday, Jean-Claude Juncker said that the UK’s then Prime Minister David Cameron was wrong to have warned Eurocrats against meddling in the EU referendum campaign.

“It was a mistake [for Brussels] not to intervene and not to interfere, because we would have been the only ones to destroy the lies that were circulated round,” he told a news conference, adding: “I was wrong to be silent at an important moment.”

Cameron’s caution to Juncker and his fellow Commission members during the 2016 campaign came following the largely unimpressed reactions that greeted the then US President Barack Obama’s stepping in to warn that voting for Brexit would send Britain to the “back of the queue” regarding a trade deal. It was later revealed that Obama’s intervention in the Brexit debate was at the express request of Prime Minister Cameron, but was considered to have backfired as British voters objected to being lectured to by a foreign leader.

Juncker, who will be replaced as leader of the EU executive in October, struck a much more neutral tone than have other Eurocrats in recent monthswhen asked about whether he would like to see Brexit cancelled.

“I don’t have fears, I don’t have hopes,” he told journalists, adding: “I was saying the other day that by comparison to the British parliament the Egyptian sphinx are open books. Either they stay or they will leave. If they stay, they stay. If they leave, they leave.”

By contrast, European Council chief Donald Tusk gave a speech at EU Parliament last month in which he proclaimed he had “dreams … that Brexit can be reversed” while, later in the same week, Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans urged Britain to “cool down and rethink” its decision to leave the bloc.

Juncker’s comments on Brexit came at a press conference which immediately the European Leadership Awards gala ceremony at Brussels’ Palais d’Egmont, where the top prize — European leader of the year — was bestowed upon the unelected Eurocrat by EU-funded Euronews and the European Business Summit (EBS), as Breitbart London reported Tuesday.

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