European Commission President Jean-Claude Junker speaks during the press conference in Brussels Dec. 18, 2015. (Xinhua/Zhou Lei)

STRASBOURG, July 4 (Xinhua) -- European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker launched into a brief tirade against the European Parliament during a Tuesday morning session here, criticizing the poor turn-out of Members of European Parliament (MEPs) for a debate on the Maltese presidency of the Council of the EU.

Juncker took offense at the very low number of MEPs who attended a debate that was meant to review the outcomes of the Maltese presidency which was viewed by many observers as a particular success.

"I would like to welcome those who have actually taken the trouble to turn out this morning, but the fact that there are about 30 members of parliament present in this debate illustrates that Parliament is not serious in this debate," Juncker said, indicating that he had wanted to pay fitting tribute to Malta's Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, who was also present in the hemicycle.

A full house at the European Parliament would have seen 751 MEPs in attendance.

"I put that to you that if Ms. Merkel (German Chancellor Angela Merkel), it's hard to imagine, or Mr. Macron (French President Emmanuel Macron) perhaps, were here today there would have been a full house," the European Commission president continued.

He was interrupted by European Parliament President Antonio Tajani, who asked him to have "a more respectful attitude."

"You may criticize the Parliament, yes, but it is not the Commission which controls the Parliament, it should be the Parliament which controls the Commission," Tajani reminded Juncker.

The European Commission president, however, was still angry, and went on to say that there were too few members in the plenary to control the commission: "You are ridiculous!"

Tajani interrupted him again with a request that he change his language, but Juncker promised to never attend such a meeting again.

"The Commission is under control of the parliament, but the parliament has to respect even the presidencies of smaller countries, which the parliament is not doing," he said.