From
queen to empress: Inside Ursula von der Leyen’s power grab
After
unveiling her new team, the European Commission president holds more influence
than ever.
September 19, 2024 4:01 am CET
By Barbara Moens, Max Griera and Jacopo Barigazzi
https://www.politico.eu/article/ursula-von-der-leyen-europe-commission-brussels-power/
BRUSSELS — When Ursula von der Leyen unveiled her team for
the next European Commission, she simultaneously silenced the doubters about
who was really in charge in Brussels.
As she revealed the 26 commissioners and their roles to the
public, one point was immediately clear: she would have unfettered control over
European Union politics. In a matter of minutes, she introduced a big title
with little responsibility for one of the most powerful countries in the
European Union, she propped up her buddies, and she diluted powerful portfolios
by dividing them among multiple people.
The power grab was complete.
“She will be even more in control of everything,” said one
EU official who, like others quoted in this piece, was granted anonymity to
speak freely. “Who thought that was even possible?”
It was the culmination of months of public and private
strategy to remove the dissenting voices of her first term as European
Commission president. From the first team, none of the naysayers remain. Big
personalities such as France’s Thierry Breton and the Netherlands’ Frans
Timmermans are now gone.
During her first term — in which she faced a global pandemic
and a war on the EU’s doorstep — she developed a reputation for making
unilateral decisions, overstepping her job description, cutting other EU
leaders out of the decision-making, and speaking only to a handful of advisers.
As a result, she gained the nickname Queen Ursula in Brussels.
The morning of von der Leyen’s announcement of her second
top team, she refused to tell the European Parliament, her partners in the
process of approving commissioners, who
she was assigning to which job. Instead, she left a meeting with the
Parliament’s top leaders and went straight into a press conference in which she
revealed all the details. She was later accused of “contempt” for the
Parliament.
Hours before, she convinced the French she would give their
commissioner nominee an exceptionally important job if they swapped out Breton.
On Tuesday, as she revealed job descriptions, they realized they’d been
bamboozled into a watered-down position.
“Anyone who thought that she could have changed her style,
her will to keep tight control, was at the very least naive,” said an EU
diplomat.
A Commission
of equals?
The public language around the 26 commissioners, one from
every EU member country (apart from Germany, because von der Leyen is its
commissioner), was diplomatic, if not assuring.
She told them they were a group of “equals.”
Ripping up the old org chart, von der Leyen said she was
ridding the Commission of “the former relatively rigid stovepipes,” making the
institution less hierarchical.
While the socialists secured a mega portfolio for Spain’s
Teresa Ribera, they were left with less important portfolios and inflated job
titles. | Pierre Philippe Marcou/Getty Images
She claimed it would allow for greater cooperation between
commissioners, and their civil servants, and give them an “equal
responsibility” to deliver on their priorities. But EU diplomats and officials,
including some of her own employees in the Commission, say her new structure
will allow von der Leyen to divide and conquer.
“I don’t think that is a bug but a feature in the system of
the new college,” said René Repasi, who leads the German Socialists in the
European Parliament, of von der Leyen’s strategy.
While the socialists, the second biggest political force in
the European Parliament, secured a mega portfolio for Spain’s Teresa Ribera,
including the powerful competition job, elsewhere they were left with less
important portfolios and inflated job titles. Von der Leyen announced that
little-known socialist Romanian nominee Roxana Mînzatu would be the executive
vice president for people, skills and preparedness.
As an added buffer, she’s set up trusted loyalists such as
Slovakia’s Maroš Šefčovič, Latvia’s Valdis Dombrovskis and Dutchman Wopke
Hoekstra to be “the guard dogs” keeping their new colleagues in check, a second
EU diplomat said.
She was even ruthless with her ally Emmanuel Macron, who,
along with then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel, pushed for her to get the
Commission job back in 2019.
One day before her announcement, France swapped Breton for
the less experienced Stéphane Séjourné, having been guaranteed a more powerful
role by von der Leyen if her biggest internal critic was axed.
But French officials feel von der Leyen played Macron,
giving his protege Séjourné a weaker job than the one Breton had.
Macron “switched someone who dared to stand up against von
der Leyen for someone with a much weaker personality,” a third EU diplomat
said. The diplomat added that Paris’ big fear ahead of this past June’s
European election was an emboldened von der Leyen.
A senior Commission official pushed back against the
characterization of the new Commission, stressing the current structure allows
for a more “holistic” approach.
“The logic is trying to improve the structure and the
ability to coordinate, that’s the logic behind it,” the official said. “But …
at the end of the day, it’s the college that decides the political questions
that we have ahead of us.”
Act II
Von der Leyen amassing power shouldn’t come as a surprise.
Once powerful leaders who steered the EU are weakened,
leaving a void for von der Leyen to fill. France’s Macron suffered a major loss
in June’s European election to the far-right and then went through a bruising
national vote. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is worried about his own future
and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk is preoccupied with domestic politics.
“You don’t have to teach von der Leyen how to play the power
game,” the third EU diplomat said. “She saw the vacuum left by the European
capitals and jumped into it.”
She’s also fortunate that former Portuguese Prime Minister
António Costa was chosen by EU leaders as her counterpart at the European
Council. He may be widely respected but he is not expected to push back against
von der Leyen (and certainly is unlikely to butt heads with her, as outgoing
Council chief Charles Michel did).
Still, von der Leyen won’t be able to fully run Europe on
her own for the next five years.
She needs the European Parliament to give the green light to
her team so they can start work — ideally sooner rather than later. And von der
Leyen needs to keep European leaders and their ambassadors in Brussels close
enough to ensure they’ll be on board with her plans for Europe’s future — and
that they will open up their wallets to pay for it all.
Clea Caulcutt contributed reporting from Paris. Sarah
Wheaton contributed reporting from Strasbourg.
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