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No favourable winds for Brussels

This could not have been the way in which European Commission President Jean Claude Juncker […]
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Uwe OPTENHÖGEL
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No favourable winds for Brussels

Policy Brief

04/10/2017
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This could not have been the way in which European Commission President Jean Claude Juncker imagined the elections in Germany would turn out. After, from a Brussels perspective, we had got through the Dutch and French elections better than many had expected, Brussels would have preferred a continuation of the grand coalition after the German elections.

By Uwe Optenhögel, FEPS Vice-President and former director of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung‘s European office

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So dürfte sich Kommissionspräsident Jean Claude Juncker das Ergebnis der Wahlen in Deutschland nicht vorgestellt haben. Nachdem man aus Brüsseler Sicht die holländischen und die französischen Wahlen (und Ende 2016 bereits die Präsidentschaftswahl in Österreich) besser überstanden hatte, als von vielen erwartet, war die brüsseler Präferenz bei der Bundestagswahl eine Fortsetzung der großen Koalition.

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