European Union Commissioner Günther Oettinger — an unelected, appointed politician who enjoys unchallenged power over the 500 million people and 28 countries that make up the EU — attacked U.S. President Donald Trump, comparing him to “autocrats” ruling Turkey and Russia.
Speaking hours before the results for the U.S. midterms were due to roll in, German politician-turned Eurocrat Oettinger lent his voice to others including France’s increasingly ambitious — but ever less popular — Emmanuel Macron in casting the United States as an enemy of the European Union.
Speaking at a business conference on Tuesday the unelected commissioner said: “Our union is a union of values… We are living in a competition — our values against other morals or values. Take state capitalism made in China, take autocrats working in Ankara, Moscow, or even in the White House in D.C.
“If we are convinced that our form of values should survive … then we have to fight”. He added that the coming years would be “much more difficult” for the European Union, Politico.EU reports.
Oettinger has previously claimed that President Trump wishes to “undermine the EU”.
Günther Oettinger himself, a former regional leader from Germany who was elevated to the unelected yet powerful European Commission in 2010, is the European Union’s Energy boss, an area which has seen particular criticism from President Trump in the recent past.
The Commission, which is wholly elected and does not answer to the people of Europe, has the sole privilege of writing the European Union’s laws — the elected European Parliament cannot create its own and only votes whether to adopt what it is handed by the Commission. The separation of the voting public from the actual source of law is one of the primary areas of concern among Eurosceptics from both the left and right, who criticise the system as undemocratic.
Commissioner Oettinger’s comments follow others made by Emmanuel Macron by just days, in which the French President made clear he saw the United States as a threat, again throwing his NATO ally in with China and Russia on a list of enemies.
Breitbart London reported Tuesday on Macron’s call for a “real European army” to target these threats, when he said: “We have to protect ourselves with respect to China, Russia and even the United States of America… We will not protect the Europeans unless we decide to have a true European army.”
Oliver JJ Lane is the editor of Breitbart London — Follow him on Twitter and Facebook
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