Famous for extravagant pronouncements and gestures like kissing European Union (EU) leaders on the forehead or playfully slapping their face – Jean-Claude Juncker was untypically guarded.
He clearly didn’t want to be seen to be trying to interfere in the general election.
However, when I put some Brexit promises to him being made by the various political parties, engage he did, crushing a number of key party pledges in the process – from an EU perspective, at least.
First off, Mr Juncker told me he thought Brexit would happen by the end of January, as Boris Johnson claims.
“The Brexit process has gone on too long already,” he said.
But the outgoing European Commission president very much took issue with the prime minister’s assertion that a brand-new comprehensive post-Brexit EU-UK trade deal could then be negotiated in a year or less.
“These things take time,” he said. “Just look at the free trade deal the EU negotiated with Canada. That took seven years.”
Mr Juncker said he had a feeling that many UK Members of Parliament (MPs) and government ministers believed negotiating trade deals was easy. But, he said, it would take quite some time to disentangle the UK from decades of forging common rules and regulations with the EU and to form a distinct and new relationship.
The Commission are trade experts – they conduct all trade negotiations on behalf of the EU.
But Mr Juncker refused to be drawn on a claim made by Donald Trump that the Brexit divorce deal agreed between the EU and Mr Johnson made trading with the US an impossibility.
“Sometimes the US president says this, sometimes he says that,” noted Mr Juncker, adding that President Trump’s statements didn’t always match up.
A UK-US trade deal was a bilateral issue for the two sides, he said.
“Trump is unpredictable. He is flexible.”
When I pointed out to Mr Juncker that Mr Trump does not like the EU as a strong concept, he retorted, “He’s very British!”
Mr Juncker also challenged a promise by the Labour Party to renegotiate the Brexit deal with the EU once again if it won the election. This would be the third divorce deal struck with Brussels, after the efforts of Theresa May and Mr Johnson. -BBC