European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and European Parliament President Martin Schulz said in a joint television appearance Tuesday night that the EU was being blamed unfairly for the uneven response to the migrant crisis and for former Commission President José Manuel Barroso’s decision to take a senior executive job at Goldman Sachs, and for other perceived failings.

Juncker and Schulz were supposed to square off in a “debate” on France24, the French government-owned international broadcaster, as part of a celebration of the 300th episode of the channel’s “Talking Europe” show. But the two men are friends who have made no secret of their mutual respect and admiration, and as they sat in the wood-paneled reading room of the Solvay Library in the European Quarter of Brussels, they frequently teamed up to fend off their questioners, and rarely disagreed with one another.

In many ways, it was an odd setting, as they sat at the center of the huge book-lined reading room, on either side of a round, white table. Had they been sitting cross-legged on a rug on the floor, it might have seemed like story time at the EU. Instead, they were perched on elegantly covered side chairs, taking turns deflecting questions. A recent EU summit in Bratislava was not a failure but showed positive small steps. The delay in starting Brexit negotiations was Britain’s fault, not the EU’s.

In sum, their performance amounted to a steadfast, if occasionally whiny, defense of EU institutions against a barrage of recent criticism, which also included an effort to pass blame on to member countries.

“The EU is as strong as the member states,” Juncker said when pressed at one point about the migrant crisis. “The EU is not failing,” he said. “The member states are failing.”

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(They also had some particularly tough comments about Hungary, which has scheduled a referendum on October 2 asking voters to reject the EU’s proposed quota system for resettling migrants.)

Later, when pushed about Barroso’s new job at Goldman Sachs, and the seeming gaps it has revealed in the European Commission’s ethics and conflict-of-interest rules, the two men insisted that any criticism of the EU was unjustified and unfair.

“We have to stop this blame game against the Commission,” Juncker said. “This Commission is not in charge of former members of the Commission.” Schulz added some stern words about Barroso, but agreed that the EU was not at fault. For Barroso, the former Commission president, to now work for “the biggest investment bank in the world,” Schulz said, “is completely unacceptable.”

“But,” he added, looking across at Juncker, “I share his view — you can’t blame the Commission.”

Given the opportunity to reach tens of millions of French television viewers, Juncker and Schulz did not appear to arrive at the Solvay Library with any particular message. Instead, they gamely fielded questions, first for about 30 minutes in French and then, after a break, for nearly 20 minutes more in English.

On one of the most touchy questions of the evening — whether Schulz intends to stay on for an unprecedented third term as EP president in violation of a power-sharing deal he agreed to in 2014 — Schulz ducked, but not before giving himself props. “I find this not surprising that people think I’m doing a good job,” he said.

Juncker, invited by the questioner, Eve Irvine, to say he would prefer an EP president from his own European People’s Party rather than Schulz, a Social Democrat, instead repeated a previous line about preferring “stability” in the EU institutions, which has been widely interpreted as an endorsement of Schulz.

This article has been updated to correct the name of former European Commission President José Manuel Barroso.