Several posts (here, here, and here) accompanied by a graphic featuring an image of the Former President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, with a text that reads, “The world’s most foolish voters live in India, who vote for leaders who advocate illegal immigrants – European Times,” are being widely shared across social media platforms. The claim accompanying the post suggests that Jean-Claude Juncker said this to the ‘European Times’. In this article, let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Former President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, said that the world’s most foolish voters live in India, according to the ‘European Times’.
Fact: There are no reports about the former President of the European Commission or the ‘European Times’ stating that Indian voters are the most foolish in the world. Moreover, there is no media outlet named ‘European Times’. Media outlets with a similar name, ‘The European Times’ have also not reported anything as mentioned in the viral post. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
To learn more about this viral claim, we conducted a relevant keyword search. However, we couldn’t find any reports stating that the former European Commission president or the European Times made these remarks regarding Indian voters. During this search, we found that there is no media outlet named ‘European Times’. However, there are media outlets with a similar name, ‘The European Times’ (here & here). Nonetheless, we could not find any reports published as mentioned in the viral post on these websites. Additionally, we found that this post has been circulating on social media since at least 2018.
During this search, we found a report by CNN published in May 2019. According to this report, during an interview with CNN, Juncker lashed out at “stupid nationalists” on the eve of European elections. The CNN report stated, “Some polls project that populists may become the most powerful group in parliament following this week’s elections in all 28 EU nations, resulting in a lasting impact on the future of the bloc and the continent at large. ‘These populist, nationalists, stupid nationalists, they are in love with their own countries,’ Juncker told CNN in his Brussels office.”
Later, we also scanned Juncker’s X(Twitter) handle to find whether he had posted anything as claimed in the viral post. However, we could not find any such posts. During this search, we came across a tweet by Jean-Claude Juncker congratulating PM Modi on winning the 2019 general elections on 24 May 2019. He also mentioned in the post that India has once again demonstrated the impressive vitality of its democratic institutions. News reports regarding Juncker congratulating PM Modi on winning the 2019 general elections can be seen here.
Upon conducting a reverse search of the photo of Juncker featured in the viral post, we found that it was taken by Aris Oikonomou, a Reuters photographer, on 30 August 2018. This photo was captured when Juncker was chairing the Annual Seminar of the European Commission College in Genval, Belgium. We have contacted Jean-Claude Juncker regarding this viral claim. We will update this fact-check once we receive a response from him.
To sum up, former President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker did not refer to Indian voters as ‘foolish’.
