Jean-Claude Juncker

Jean-Claude Juncker (; born 9 December 1954) is a Luxembourgish politician who served as the 21st prime minister of Luxembourg from 1995 to 2013 and 12th president of the European Commission from 2014 to 2019. He also served as Finance Minister from 1989 to 2009 and President of the Eurogroup from 2005 to 2013. By the time Juncker left office as Prime Minister in 2013, he was the longest-serving head of any national government in the EU and one of the longest-serving democratically elected leaders in the world, with his tenure encompassing the height of the European financial and sovereign debt crisis. In 2005, he became the first permanent President of the Eurogroup. In 2014, the European People's Party (EPP) had Juncker as its lead candidate, or Spitzenkandidat, for the presidency of the Commission in the 2014 elections. This marked the first time that the Spitzenkandidat process was employed. Juncker is the first president to have campaigned as a candidate for the position prior to the election, a process introduced with the Treaty of Lisbon. The EPP won 220 out of 751 seats in the Parliament. On 27 June 2014, the European Council officially nominated Juncker for the position, and the European Parliament elected him on 15 July 2014 with 422 votes out of the 729 cast. He took office on 1 November 2014 and served until 30 November 2019, when he was succeeded by Ursula von der Leyen. Juncker has stated that his priorities would be the creation of a digital single market, the development of an EU Energy Union, the negotiation of the Transatlantic Trade Agreement, the continued reform of the Economic and Monetary Union of the European Union—with the social dimension in mind, a "targeted fiscal capacity" for the Eurozone, and the 2015–2016 British EU membership renegotiations.