It’s Ursula von der Leyen’s Europe—for Now

In the four years since she became European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen has mostly been praised by Brussels insiders and top officials around the world. Many say her record—which has put the EU significantly closer to becoming a coherent United States of Europe—already qualifies her as the best Commission president since the celebrated French politician Jacques Delors three decades ago. A 99-year-old Henry Kissinger recently acknowledged that she is Europe’s undisputed leader, and thus provides the EU with the single telephone number that he as U.S. Secretary of State is famously (though perhaps erroneously) quoted as saying that the bloc lacked.

And yet, there’s growing reason to think von der Leyen—or VDL, as she is widely referred to in Brussels—may be unable to secure a second term in the job next year. The problem isn’t any failure of international diplomacy, but rather a matter of domestic politics, or the European equivalent. Detractors within her own conservative European People’s Party (EPP), which would have to nominate her, deeply resent von der Leyen’s leadership.

The 64-year-old, three-time German cabinet minister has admittedly revealed the same political temperament in Brussels that she had displayed as a domestic politician under benefactor Angela Merkel—that of a consistently liberal-minded, if uncharismatic, workhorse who rides roughshod over opponents, whether in rival parties or her own. But the EPP’s bigger problem is the substance of her pragmatic record, which it sees as evidence of betrayal.

As so often in the EU’s history, crises have proven instrumental in defining the Commission president’s tenure. In response to the COVID-19 crisis, VDL corralled the 27-member bloc’s health ministers to procure vaccines together rather than separately. Even though the U.K. beat the bloc to dispersing the vaccine by two weeks, the EU’s solidarity enabled a cost-effective and even-handed rollout. The EU’s vaccination rate is higher than the United States’, and the EU is by far the largest exporter of vaccines in the world. to developing countries. VDL’s Commission then shattered the taboo of joint borrowing—a practice vilified by none more than Germany’s Christian Democrats—by incurring more than 700 billion euros in debt to pay for a pandemic recovery fund. The fund was the largest stimulus package ever financed in Europe, designed to jumpstart the beleaguered economy in ways that would make Europe more digital and greener.

Likewise, the Commission secured 18 billion euros in aid for Ukraine this year, on top of ten rounds of unprecedented sanctions against Russia. VDL has been a vocal, steadfast supporter of Ukraine, marshalling allegiance from the bloc, much to the satisfaction of the Biden administration. Moreover, the EU has opened Europe’s borders to 8 million Ukrainian refugees, bolstered common security, negotiated common energy supplies, and nailed down a Northern Ireland compromise with the U.K.

“This is a moment of enormous acceleration in the shaping of common policies,” the Spanish daily El Pais exclaimed last year. “Rarely have the European institutions been so in tune with national dynamics. … Public opinion approves to a high degree (over 80 percent) with the EU’s current policy towards Ukraine and the development of a self-sufficient energy policy.”

And even though the European Green Deal, the EU’s blueprint to become the first climate-neutral continent by 2050, bears the imprimatur of Commission vice-president Frans Timmermans, VDL has pushed it energetically—raising the ire, not untypically, of arch conservatives in her own EPP, the umbrella party for the EU’s center right.

But from Social Democrats and Greens she has reaped lofty praise. “The Commission has made the Green Deal its centerpiece,” one center-left member of the European Parliament, who asked to remain anonymous, told Foreign Policy. “We couldn’t have imagined this a few years ago. Given the parliament’s composition, it’s hard to see how anyone else could do it better,” the member said, referring to the parliament’s right-center tilt.

Under VDL’s reign, the EU jacked up its climate target to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55 percent by 2030 by building out renewable energies, decreasing energy demand, and phasing out fossil fuels. The EU has exploited the energy crisis to change course and outstrip its 2030 renewable power target of 40 percent. Also, since 2020, the long-ineffective carbon pricing system finally packs more bite than bark: the price per ton for industry, energy generation, and aviation has quintupled, and buildings, shipping, and transportation fuels will join the emissions trading regime in coming years. And the EU agreed last year to phase out new combustion engines for passenger cars from 2035 onward. Next up is a green industrial plan meant to match U.S. President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.

It is this vigor on climate policy, among other things, that has roiled harder-line conservatives in the EPP. Key figures, such as German EPP president Manfred Weber, have fired barbs at VDL and even proposed an alternative candidate for 2024: European Parliament President Roberta Metsola, a Maltese lawyer with culturally conservative credentials, including opposition to abortion. (Weber had been the EPP’s lead candidate in 2019, but was unceremoniously pushed aside after the election in favor of VDL.)

The obvious question posed by uncomprehending outsiders is why this extremely intelligent, highly motivated, politically flexible operator (and mother of seven children) is not beloved and feted in her own ranks? During her career in Germany, her numbers in opinion polls were always rock bottom and no one (except maybe Merkel herself and then only briefly) ever seriously considered her as a candidate for chancellor. Could it really be so petty, as some suggest, that it’s because she’s just “too perfect”: the consummately successful mother and professional, coiffure always just right, well-groomed to a fault?

“To many, she has the annoying demeanor of an uber-nanny,” explained Mariam Lau, a senior editor of the German weekly Die Zeit. Lau considers VDL one of Europe’s most competent and capable center-right politicians, even if many in her own party cannot bring themselves to acknowledge this. But Lau admitted that in VDL’s presence, she checks twice “whether my shoes are properly polished and my fingernails clean and manicured.”

Brussels insiders such as veteran consultant Nicholas Whyte say there’s more to it than that. “She has the reputation of being distant and aloof,” he told Foreign Policy. Born and bred in Belgium, married since 1986 to fellow physician Heiko von der Leyen, the daughter of a well-heeled German political family (her father was postwar Christian Democrat bigwig Ernst Albrecht) lives during the week in a tiny room just above her office on the 13th floor of the Commission’s Berlaymont headquarters. Rarely seen out on the town, unlike her predecessors, her management style is highly centralized with little space to maneuver for those not in her tight inner circle, working on her prize projects.

The bizarre machinations of the EPP aside, VDL faces other hurdles to a second term. Of course,  the EPP must emerge the strongest party from the election at a time when center-right conservatives often lose out to populists. Moreover, a newly elected European Parliament may contain fewer conservatives, liberals, and Social Democrats—the three groups that secured her a razor-thin majority in 2019. In this scenario, Green votes on her behalf could be decisive. Also, the left-center government in Germany would have to nominate her, too.

The stars will have to line up perfectly for Europe’s impeccable anchorwoman.