Brussels: Jean-Claude Juncker, incoming head of the European Commission, named his team for the next five years Wednesday to face the daunting challenges of a stalled EU economy and widespread disillusionment.
Typically upbeat, however, and ready with a joke in answer to awkward questions, Juncker spoke confidently of the future, promising to streamline the running of the European Union to make it more transparent and easily understood.
Until last year, the longest-serving European premier as head of government in Luxembourg, Juncker became best known for helping steer the eurozone through a near-terminal debt crisis.
At moments when the whole single currency project looked about to collapse, Juncker kept calm, keeping everyone on board when all seemed lost.
No little part of his success was due to his ability to find essential compromises, reconciling the often sharply differing views of France and Germany, the top two economies in the bloc.
"When I want to speak in French, I think in German; when I want to speak in German, I think in French, with the result that I am totally incomprehensible," he joked typically after one particularly strained period.
He has not been afraid to be blunt with member states when required and is well known for speaking out when others might not.
He has "two fatal flaws -- he has an opinion and he is not afraid to share it", said one European official.
There have been criticisms and setbacks as well as the incredible strains of the debt crisis which threatened several times to sink the euro. However, he said that none of this dampened his faith in a federal European state which could be home to all the old continent`s traditions and peoples after untold years of conflict and bloodshed.
"For me, Europe is about taking a series of concrete steps and strong, perhaps even fervent, convictions," he told German TV. "But strong convictions alone are worth nothing if you can`t be pragmatic too."
Juncker was born December 9, 1954 in a Europe still struggling to rise from the wreckage of World War II, in which his father had been press-ganged into the German army.
His father was a strong influence, not least for his experiences as a metal worker and union member.
Juncker is well known to appreciate the finer things in life such as good food and drink, and holds firmly to the political right but is suspicious of its simple prescription that free market economics can solve all problems.
