ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS 

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: One of the big decisions on David Cameron’s plate right now is who to send to Europe as Britain’s Commissioner.  He has to nominate a British politician to become a European Union Commission and historically the United Kingdom has had a number of high profile roles in the European Commission but following the Prime Minister’s defeat against Jean-Claude Juncker he’ll need to tread rather carefully so I’m joined now via Skype by the Luxembourg MEP,  a former EU Commissioner, Viviane Reding who until two weeks’ ago she was also Vice-President of the European Commission. A very good morning to you, can you tell me first of all was Jean-Claude offended, was he angered by the attack launched by the United Kingdom against him?

VIVIANE REDING: I think the whole Luxembourg country and all its population was offended because that was clearly playing the man and not playing the ball and we did not appreciate all the negative sounds which came out of Great Britain. 

DM: So will Great Britain, the United Kingdom, pay the price when it comes to getting a good role for a European Commissioner? 

VIVIANE REDING: I cannot tell you that because that is only the President of the Commission who builds his team but I can tell you that politically speaking, if you want to be a strong team player then you do not decide to sit on the bench.   

DM: Okay, a strong team player, there is a lot of discussion as you know about who Britain might like to see appointed, some of them are what we call Eurosceptics, do you think that would be a bad move from the British point of view?

VIVIANE REDING: It will be an absolutely bad move from the British point of view because simply if you want to construct something together with 27 other nations you cannot send somebody who wants to destruct the whole building which has been built during the last decades. 

DM: Will it also help on the gender front, we are discussing a lot about that as you may be aware in the United Kingdom about the structure of the United Kingdom government, would it help to send a woman to the European Commission? 

VIVIANE REDING: It certainly would help because I think there are not enough women candidates and no government, no European government, can be built in this time of the world without enough female talent on board.  So it will be a good argument to send a strong female politician to be part of the team of Jean-Claude Juncker. 

DM: Okay, so preferably a woman and preferably not a Eurosceptic.  Let’s push this a little bit further because you know the other agenda in the United Kingdom is to deal with things primarily like immigration and access to benefits, especially from countries that newly accede to the European Union, is there any hope of progress on those fronts in your book?   

VIVIANE REDING: There has been a lot of speaking about this and a lot of party politic polemics on this unfortunately.  Now we do have basic rules in our internal market, the free movement of goods, of capitals, of services and of people and those are the basic values on which Europe has been built, those values will not be eliminated.  Then of course if people move to your country, you have national laws, the laws on social security for instance, the laws on benefits, those are not European laws, those are national laws and if there is a mischief then this mischief should be solved by the British authorities. 

DM: So you are saying  that – well let’s deal with that, the free movement of peoples, that is non-negotiable? 

VIVIANE REDING: Absolutely. 

DM: But therefore, just to deconstruct it, if you want to limit benefits to indeed other EU members then that’s up to the national parliament?

VIVIANE REDING: The national parliaments have to create national laws which are fair and which eliminate all misuse of the benefits system which is established in a nation state so that is the British parliamentarians who have to take care of those problems.  

DM: But could you foresee if future countries accede to the European Union, could you see the issue of transitional controls being looked at, longer ones or indeed even permanent ones?  

VIVIANE REDING: Absolutely, this has already been done in the latest enlargements.  Now you certainly know that Great Britain is one of those countries that has always pushed for enlargement, I am one of those politicians who was very cautious about enlarging, enlarging, enlarging.  I would rather wait a moment and consolidate rather than go on making Europe bigger but the British government always had a different point of view.  Now it is for the British government to see that they bring their house in order in order to cope with all these enlargements they had wanted.  

DM: Okay, fascinating talking to you, thank you very much, Viviane Reding there live from Luxembourg.