Juncker bids adieu, saying ‘I’m hungry’

At final midday news conference, outgoing Commission president says he has ‘shed a lot of tears’ but leaves ‘with elements of satisfaction.’

Jean-Claude Juncker is off for a very long lunch break.

He capped his five-year term as Commission president on Friday with an emotional final news conference, at which he declined to offer any public advice to his successor, Ursula von der Leyen, but said: "She needs to take care of Europe."

Juncker, a former 19-year prime minister of Luxembourg, retires after one of the longest and most storied careers in EU politics, the last five as the political chief of the Commission's 32,000-strong civil service.

"I am not the man of farewells," Juncker said in his opening remarks to a pressroom packed with reporters and staff, who filled all seats and lined the walls. "I want to tell you I am leaving the presidency of the Commission with elements of satisfaction and with several regrets."

Ahead of his final workday in office, Juncker authored POLITICO's Brussels Playbook newsletter, where he listed some of those regrets, including failing to achieve the reunification of Cyprus, a recent decision by the European Council not to open membership talks with North Macedonia and Albania, and his inability to achieve a new partnership agreement with Switzerland.

The outgoing Commission president was his classic Europhile self, declaring to journalists: "I have often said that the euro and I are the only survivors of the Maastricht Treaty" — the accord signed by EU countries in 1992.

In response to a question about his victory as the Spitzenkandidat or lead candidate from the conservative European People's Party in 2014, Juncker said he thinks it was a mistake for EU leaders to abandon the system in the selection of his successor.

Asked who he thought would win an ideological battle within his EPP conservative family over Europe's future — outgoing Council President Donald Tusk, who has championed the advance of liberal democracy, or Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who has declared himself a prophet of illiberal democracy and Christian Europe — Juncker replied curtly: "Tusk."

In trademark trilingual fashion, Juncker switched from English to French to German and back again, noting that he had also failed to have Luxembourgish designated as an official EU language, and at one point confusing his own tongue. "Was I speaking in French or German," he asked at one point in French.

"I still don't know which language I'm speaking," he said, adding, "If one speaks several languages, we never know in which language we dream."

"I am too stupid," he continued, "to remember dreams that have been mine."

Juncker, known for funny, unexpected asides, including halting press conferences to answer his mobile phone, or to spontaneously toss out a joke or to kiss a counterpart, suddenly seemed lost in dreamland.

"It's pleasant to see that dreams are not subjected to the dictatorship of transparency," he said, in what appeared to be some sort of commentary on the years he has lived in the public spotlight, and his imminent return to private life.

Juncker also had some choice words for his audience of reporters. "Journalists are not allies, they are not slaves, they are there."

Before the outgoing president's appearance, the Juncker Commission's final news conference featured a long farewell, in rhyming verse, from chief spokeswoman Mina Andreeva, as well as parting remarks by her deputy Natasha Bertaud, who was also emotional but did not rhyme.

After taking a few questions, Juncker declared that he had had enough. The traditional midday news conference, which started Friday at 12:30 p.m., had cut into his lunch hour.

"I'm hungry," he said. And with that Jean-Claude c'est fini.