Ursula von der Leyen can run, but can she also
hide?
Paul Taylor
The European Commission president is running for
re-election. Yet a political cronyism scandal is dogging her path
Wed 17 Apr
2024 07.00 BST
Ursula von
der Leyen became president of the European Commission in a backroom deal in
2019 without facing Europe’s voters. Now she is running for re-election almost
without campaigning. The former German defence minister, 65, was chosen
unopposed last month as lead candidate of the centre-right European People’s
party for the European parliament elections on 6-9 June, although she does not
plan to take a seat in the EU legislature. Since then, she has shunned media
questioning as far as possible, and is refusing to commit to debating the other
candidates in public.
She has not
confirmed that she will show up for the high-profile Maastricht debate on 29
April, according to the organisers, and political sources say a major European
newspaper had to drop plans to stage its own debate among the
Spitzenkandidaten, or lead candidates, because von der Leyen would not pledge
to attend.
Frustrated
opponents are starting to taunt her as the invisible candidate. “Ursula von der
Leyen is claiming to defend European democracy, yet she has refused to run in
the European parliament elections, and has failed to clarify whether she will
participate in any of the election debates,” Dutch MEP Bas Eickhout, co-lead
candidate of the Greens, said last week.
Her coyness
is at least partly due to a political cronyism scandal that is dogging her path
to a second coronation. Von der Leyen is avoiding questioning about her
decision to appoint fellow German Christian Democrat MEP Markus Pieper as the
EU commission’s first envoy for small and medium-sized enterprises, even though
he was reportedly rated below two female contenders for the highly paid role by
an independent selection committee.
In a
non-binding amendment adopted by 382 votes to 144, the European parliament
called last week for the controversial appointment, first revealed in February
by two investigative journalists, to be rescinded and the contest run again.
Lawmakers questioned whether the principles of “merit, gender balance and
geographical balance” had been taken into consideration. That followed a letter
to von der Leyen by four commissioners from rival parties challenging the
“transparency and impartiality” of the selection process.
After the
commission spokesperson had insisted all the rules had been respected and there
was no intention to revise the decision, Pieper resigned on Monday hours before
he was due to take up the €17,000-a-month job. Of course he blamed the French
internal market commissioner Thierry Breton, one of the four critics, for
making life miserable for small business. While his departure was an attempt to
draw a line under the affair, von der Leyen is bound to face nagging questions
about the apparent favouritism as soon as she appears in public.
As
political scandals or banana skins go, “Piepergate” ranks as a pretty small
tremor on the Richter scale. Media attempts to skewer von der Leyen over
exchanges of text messages with the CEO of pharma giant Pfizer at the height of
the Covid-19 pandemic, as the EU scrambled to procure huge quantities of
vaccines, have stumbled over her failure to disclose the contents.
But those
nagging issues are not the only reason that von der Leyen has been mostly in
hiding since officially launching her campaign earlier in the month in Athens.
As the first sitting head of the EU executive to seek a second term since Jose
Manuel Barroso in 2009, she may well feel she can afford to skip the hustings
until the last minute. Especially as the pro-European EPP is leading
comfortably in all pan-European opinion polls, despite a surge in support for
the far right.
Her
campaign team under chief-of-staff Björn Seibert, on temporary leave from the
commission, only started work in the second week of April. Her communications
and social media team are just beginning. All indicators point to a minimalist
campaign around the themes of preserving security and prosperity from populists
and extremists on both sides, with von der Leyen depicted as the steady hand on
Europe’s tiller in heavy geopolitical seas.
The
cynical, no-brainer campaign strategy is to max out on the advantages of
incumbency and ignore your rivals rather than giving them the boost of debating
with the boss. Why show up to be attacked by angry Eurosceptics, pesky greens
or bolshie leftists before small television and online audiences when you can
rack up photo opportunities discussing Iran’s missile attack on Israel with
world leaders, or cutting ribbons on EU-funded infrastructure projects?
“She’s a
good debater but frankly, why take the risk?” an EPP insider said. “ Let them
hit you with the fact that you didn’t do it, but don’t do it because you’d only
be debating people who are not real contenders for the job.”
The loudest
objections to von der Leyen’s invisibility approach are the pro-European Greens
and liberal centrists who are projected to lose the most seats and are
desperate for the oxygen of publicity from the debates. They are correct about
the democratic principle that elections are a time to thrash out policy
differences and confront ideas.
But
European parliament elections are a strange beast. They are more like 27
national elections in which many of those who bother to vote see a no-cost
opportunity to give their governments a kicking. The issues in Poland are not
the same as in Spain or in the Netherlands.
Despite
efforts over decades to create a single European electorate with pan-European
political parties, pan-European lead candidates and pan-European television
debates, this election will be only tangentially about EU issues such as
building common defences, reforming common fiscal rules, the EU’s new common
migration policy or even the joint fight against the climate crisis.
That’s
another reason why there is little upside for von der Leyen in taking part in
much public debate. It isn’t really the electorate that will decide whether she
gets a second term. It’s the 27 national leaders who will tussle over the
distribution of top EU jobs after the election, and the party machines in the
European parliament that will wrestle over endorsing or rejecting her, based on
their own interests.
Running a
stealth campaign may be von der Leyen’s best chance of avoiding offending any
of the big beasts of the European jungle who will determine her fate. It’s a
shame for democracy. If she runs, she shouldn’t hide. But until she shows up
beaming and regal for the final television debate, she’s likely to remain
mostly out of sight, to the immense frustration of her rivals and the media.
Paul Taylor
is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre
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