Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker. In the course of a long political career, my guest today came to be seen as the arch advocate for a stronger, more powerful European Union. It was a stance that won Jean-Claude Juncker, both admirers and detractors across the continent. He honed his political skills in Luxembourg.

He rose from humble beginnings as the son of a steelworker

to be prime minister there for 18 years.

His networking skill at Europe's top table

earned him the role of EU Commission President in 2014. He was at the centre of efforts

to keep Greece in the Eurozone during a protracted debt crisis, and he oversaw the Brussels' response

to Britain's Brexit referendum and the subsequent fraught negotiations over the terms of the first

ever departure from the EU.

Now he's watching from the sidelines as his successor, Ursula van der Leyen,

attempts to navigate a coherent collective course through the COVID crisis.

It hasn't been easy.

The EU's approach to vaccine procurement has seen it lagged behind neighbouring

Britain, and that's caused internal and external tensions at a time when the EU is also facing

a massive economic challenge and questions about its geopolitical ambition. Jean-Claude Juncker

once bemoaned a loss of collective EU libido. There's the problem

getting worse. Well, he joins me on the line from Brussels. Welcome to Hard Talk. It's my pleasure

to be here. Pleasure to have you on the show. There you sit in Brussels. Of course, you're no longer

the president of the commission, but you still watch events very, very closely. How disappointed are you by the EU's failure to deliver a speedy

vaccination rollout? I'm, I have to say, a little bit disappointed by the better performance of

the European Union, does not the fault of the Commission,

but also of the Member States. And I would like the Member States and the Commission to speed

up the efforts to provide vaccines for each and everyone in the European Union.

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