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Ursula
von der Leyen faces blowback over diplomatic ‘overreach’
As the
Iran conflict enters its second week, national diplomats say the European
Commission president is overstepping her role and wading onto their turf.
March 9,
2026 4:00 am CET
By
Nicholas Vinocur
BRUSSELS
― European governments are irritated over what they see as Ursula von der
Leyen’s move to position herself as the EU’s chief representative abroad,
saying that during the opening days of the U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran
she went beyond her mandate.
In
conversations with POLITICO, nine diplomats, EU officials and lawmakers,
hailing from small and large European countries, criticized what they described
as the European Commission president’s diplomatic overreach. Disapproval of her
handling of the Iran crisis comes on top of carping about other foreign policy
issues, including the Commission’s efforts to speed up Ukraine’s entry into the
EU and von der Leyen’s approach to Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace.”
With the
Middle East conflict entering its second week, the EU has struggled to speak
with a common voice. Several governments are irked that von der Leyen seems to
be playing the role the EU’s foreign affairs chief, Kaja Kallas ― meant to
represent the 27 capitals ― should normally do. In the first days of the
crisis, von der Leyen signaled support for regime change in Tehran and held no
fewer than a dozen calls with EU and Gulf state leaders. She’s repeatedly
staked out public positions that go well beyond the consensus between the
bloc’s members, her critics said.
“I felt I
was hallucinating … watching Ursula von der Leyen call the heads of Gulf
states,” said Nathalie Loiseau, a centrist French lawmaker on the European
Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee. “She has no diplomatic service, speaks
without a mandate or intelligence briefings. Her words have no value beyond her
individual statement.”
The role
of coordinating the bloc’s foreign policy, the diplomats who spoke to POLITICO
said, lies with Kallas, whose task it is to liaise with capitals and formulate
a common position — even if that’s often a slow and painstaking process. Von
der Leyen risks creating confusion in relations with the rest of the world,
they said.
“The
problem is the president going out with ideas and somehow committing the
European Union without consulting countries beforehand,” said a senior EU
diplomat involved in foreign policy discussions and who, like others in this
article, was granted anonymity to speak frankly about sensitive internal
matters. “She is saying things that are not in her mandate.”
These
tensions will be in the background as von der Leyen and Kallas preside over a
conference of EU ambassadors in Brussels today, where both are due to give
keynote speeches.
The
Commission rejected the accusations, saying von der Leyen was carrying out her
work as she should. She is demonstrating “political leadership of the
Commission’s external policies” in line with the EU’s treaties, a Commission
spokesperson said.
“Outreach
to other leaders worldwide is part and parcel of President von der Leyen’s
responsibilities, be it bilaterally, multilaterally or in EU-led initiatives,
such as the Global Gateway event,” designed to boost investment around the
world, the spokesperson said.
The EU’s
formal position on the Iran war was not set out by von der Leyen but defined by
Kallas in a statement coordinated with Europe’s 27 countries a week ago,
according to the spokesperson. “The statement reflects the EU’s position on the
matter,” the spokesperson said.
Europe’s
president?
Von der
Leyen’s evolution into the EU’s most powerful figure with a stature on a par
with presidents and prime ministers has been nearly seven years in the making.
The
former German defense minister has led the EU through one crisis after another,
from the Covid pandemic to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and trade
disputes with U.S. President Trump.
In many
of those situations, EU leaders have expressed gratitude that she has stepped
forward.
“You
rarely hear much criticism of von der Leyen when it comes to Ukraine,” said the
diplomat from a mid-sized EU country. “That’s because most EU countries are
aligned in their support of Ukraine and it’s almost seen as an internal
matter.”
Diplomats
voiced support for the EU executive chief’s work as a crisis manager, praising
her for coordinating support for Ukraine against Russia and managing tense
commercial relations with the U.S.
The
difficulties have emerged on thorny Middle East politics or when the
Commission’s position on EU expansion is felt as pressuring governments to
agree before they’re ready.
The
diplomats who spoke to POLITICO argued that von der Leyen’s flurry of tweets
and conversations with Gulf leaders did not formally represent EU foreign
policy positions. Critics also voiced skepticism about what von der Leyen, who
has no military means at her disposal and has no mandate to shape EU-wide
foreign policy positions, could be offering Gulf states under missile and drone
attack from Iran.
“What
exactly is she promising when she says we will support them?” asked Loiseau.
“Who is ‘we’? For now, the support is the Charles de Gaulle [French aircraft
carrier], Rafale jets in Abu Dhabi and defense agreements with some countries.”
“What
we’re seeing is role-play with nothing behind it,” said Loiseau, who belongs to
French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party. Von der Leyen is a member of
the center-right European People’s Party, along with German Chancellor
Friedrich Merz.
A
statement in which von der Leyen appeared to embrace a change of leadership in
Iran proved particularly irksome to EU countries that lean closer to Spanish
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s highly critical stance toward the U.S.-Israeli
airstrikes.
EU
countries are split over how to respond to the conflict. Despite reaching a
consensus on a statement about the war on March 1, ten countries had advocated
a more prominent invocation of international law during an emergency gathering
of EU foreign ministers, two diplomats said.
Some
countries argue that von der Leyen’s statements don’t reflect that delicate
balance. “We [Europe] are meant to be the beacon of international law,” said a
fourth diplomat. “But now she has trapped us on regime change. Whose position
is this? Not ours.”
Gulf
countries had been “grateful” for von der Leyen’s “proactive” outreach in
recent days, the Commission spokesperson said.
‘This is
not what we want’
In Paris,
it’s von der Leyen’s decision to send her commissioner for the Mediterranean,
Dubravka Šuica, to the inaugural session of the Board of Peace ― the Trump-led
body aimed at promoting global stability ― that irked most, leading to public
criticism from French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot.
The
ruffled feathers were “predictable,” a fifth diplomat said.
“As we
knew, Trump made no distinction between observers and full members [of the
Board of Peace],” the diplomat said. “He displayed the EU flag along with
others, suggesting that Europe supports this initiative. This is not what we
want.”
As if to
underscore the divisions in Brussels, Kallas had been working to coordinate a
joint position on the Board of Peace by texting the bloc’s foreign ministers
and inviting them not to participate, the diplomat said. “This is what we
expect” on foreign policy, the diplomat added.
Defending
Šuica’s participation, the Commission distanced itself from fully supporting
the Trump body.
“The
participation of Commissioner Šuica cannot be interpreted as amounting to an
implicit endorsement of the Board of Peace by the Commission, let alone by the
[European] Union, nor an endorsement of the outcome of the meeting or of any
resolutions that might be adopted by the board members,” the Commission
spokesperson said.
One
diplomat from a mid-sized EU country backed up that view. “On the Board of
Peace, realistically the large majority of member states were fine with how
this went,” the diplomat said.
Reading
the room
The way
the Commission has pushed to expand the EU to new members has annoyed some
capitals.
Marta
Kos, the commissioner in charge of the topic, has floated a range of creative
solutions, including an attempt to bring Ukraine into the bloc as early as
2027.
The ideas
— shared during informal briefings rather than in written proposals — have
irked governments, prompting them last week to push back during a dinner with
von der Leyen’s powerful chief of staff, Bjoern Seibert.
“This
dinner was overdue,” said a EU diplomat from a large EU country. “We all want
Ukraine to be anchored in the EU, but enlargement needs to be acceptable to
member states. There is a process — we are reminding them of that.”
“The
Commission did not read the room on this one,” said the diplomat from a
mid-sized EU country.
At the
dinner, diplomats told the Commission they wanted to retain a merit-based
approach to EU enlargement and were not in favor of a Commission idea to allow
countries like Ukraine to join while they are still working to meet the joining
criteria, according to officials in the meeting.
An EU
official aware of von der Leyen’s thinking pushed back on the idea that her
Commission had overstepped on enlargement, pointing out that the EU executive
has not put forward any formal proposals on changing the EU’s approach.
Even so,
it was the institution’s job to reflect on how procedures may be updated in
light of geopolitical changes. “The world has changed dramatically” since those
rules were created, said the official.
Deciding
it consciously
Diplomats
who spoke to POLITICO for this article voiced support for the EU executive
chief’s work as a crisis manager, praising her for coordinating support to
Ukraine against Russia and managing tense commercial relations with the U.S.
But
discomfort with von der Leyen’s foreign policy activity has led to barely
concealed tensions with Kallas — creating a need for a reckoning about who does
what in the EU, several diplomats and officials said.
“We need
to decide whether we want an institutional change — whether we want to give
more foreign policy functions to the Commission,” said Nacho Sánchez Amor, a
Spanish European lawmaker from the Socialists and Democrats group. “If so, we
need to think about it, examine it, and decide it consciously.”
The Iran
crisis, the push to get Ukraine into the bloc and the wider challenges prompted
by Trump’s second term in the White House add to the sense of unease in some
capitals.
“There is
a conversation to have about the competences” of the EU in foreign policy, a
diplomat from a large country said. “Between the HRVP [High Representative
Kallas], the Commission and the Council presidency, there is a risk of
cacophony. There will be a time to discuss this in depth.”
Max
Griera contributed to this report.
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