15/09/2016
As Mr Juncker was keen to remind us yesterday, next year is the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome. In fact, the signing was on 25 March 1957 so the 25 March next year would be a good day for Mrs May to invoke Article 50. The symbolism would be hard to beat.
But, in time, yesterday â 14 September 2016 - was the day that future historians will mark down as the date when the European Union confirmed its downwards trajectory into obscurity.
This was the day when it needed a Commission President to pull the "colleagues" together, offering a new breadth of vision and a unifying theme that would re-energise the project. But, instead of rising to the challenge, Junker sank to it â offering a bureaucratic potpourri bound up in leaden prose, delivered in languages and translated into twenty more.
The speech was so unremarkable that it was remarkable for being almost totally unmemorable, the only really unusual thing about it being that fact that the "
authorised version" differed significantly from the version
as delivered. Missing completely from the authorised version was any reference to the UK or Brexit.
Even in the accompanying "
letter of intent", addressed to Martin Schulz and to Prime Minister Robert Fico (Slovakian holder of the EU's rotating presidency), there was only one reference to the UK. This had Juncker declaring: "Though the outcome of the referendum in the UK affects us all, it must not dominate our agenda for the next years".
In the actual speech, as delivered, Juncker conceded that the European Union had been battered by the referendum and the decision to leave had been a "wake-up call", it would not threaten its existence. "The EU as such is not at risk", he said.
Later, almost apologetically, Juncker tucked in an intriguing reference the
Five Presidents' Report, saying that the agenda was still in place, with the Commission setting out a "vision for the future" in a White Paper, in good time for the Treaty of Rome anniversary.
But, by then it will be too late. Nine months will have passed since the Brexit referendum result â the gestation period of a human child â enough time for all the stresses and resentments to bubble to the surface, with no vision to counter them.
Charting the progressive decline will be an exercise in applied tedium as the failures of the project are laid bare. Sadly for the Union, though, Juncker has already written its epitaph. He did that yesterday, observing: "never before have I seen such little common ground between our Member States. So few areas where they agree to work together".
"Never before", he added, "have I heard so many leaders speak only of their domestic problems, with Europe mentioned only in passing, if at all. Never before have I seen representatives of the EU institutions setting very different priorities, sometimes in direct opposition to national governments and national Parliaments. It is as if there is almost no intersection between the EU and its national capitals any more".
"Never before", he continued, "have I seen national governments so weakened by the forces of populism and paralysed by the risk of defeat in the next elections. Never before have I seen so much fragmentation, and so little commonality in our Union".
But, if he identified the problems, his solutions were the dusty, unimaginative fare of a bureaucrat. Being kinder to him than he deserved,
EU Observer suggested that he was "a wise man lost in details".
In fact, this was supposed to be his come-back speech, after "a difficult summer marked by criticism over his sometimes erratic behaviour". He risked falling into the same trap old trap of making promises that he can't keep. But, says
EU Observer, if he was betting that his come-back speech alone would mark a come back, he might well lose.
Actually, he has already lost. This was the speech of a loser - Mr Juncker is not the man to save the Union. The hour cometh, but the man didn't. That means the only way out is down.
