Ursula von der Leyen was leaving nothing to chance. At a private meeting with members of the European parliament in Strasbourg last Tuesday, she chose not to reveal who would get what job in her incoming European Commission, due to take office at the end of the year.
Then immediately afterwards, during a brisk 21-minute press conference, she announced every single name, leaving MEPs fuming. “That’s not how it should be done,” said one.
The secrecy around the big reveal is characteristic of von der Leyen, who carefully controls the flow of information. Named as the most powerful woman in the world by Forbes magazine and soon to start a second term as commission president, she has organised her new team in a way that is a lesson in how to amass control.
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“This is very like the divide and rule approach,” said Sophia Russack, a researcher at the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels.
EU watchers have been poring over organisational charts of the new commission, drawing in lines of who reports to who. The answer is soon clear: all power flows to von der Leyen.
The “presidentialisation” of the commission has been under way since the EU’s “big bang” enlargement in 2004 made the EU executive’s top table far bigger, creating a need for more direction. Each of the 27 member states has a commissioner, a privilege none wants to give up. But von der Leyen has taken presidential power to another level.
Last week, she oversaw the departure of one of her sharpest critics: French commissioner Thierry Breton, who had expected to return to Brussels for a second term after being nominated by France’s president, Emmanuel Macron. Instead, after back channel talks between Macron and von der Leyen, Breton was out. He resigned, accusing her of “questionable governance”.
In another show of strength, von der Leyen arm-twisted governments to send her female commissioner candidates, rewarding countries that complied (including Romania and Slovenia) with big jobs or impressive-sounding titles.
Governments that snubbed her request to suggest women (Austria, Ireland) found themselves without the “big economic portfolio” they had sought, albeit gaining weighty jobs.
In 2019, von der Leyen was a surprise last-minute choice to lead the commission. She took office weeks before the Covid pandemic tipped Europe into unprecedented crisis. During lockdown, working with a small team in the commission’s HQ, where she also lives – von der Leyen has a windowless converted washroom on the 13th floor – reinforced her penchant for taking decisions alone.
“The question now for the next term is whether she can do normal,” Russack said. During von der Leyen’s first term, she added, “her team operated like a commando hub in a crisis and that worked so well. I wonder if she is able to wield her power in the same way when she doesn’t have the excuse of an emergency.”
The tasks in her in-tray are daunting: the brutal war in Ukraine and the spectre of Donald Trump in the White House. The EU is off-track with targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, while struggling to switch to a green economy in the face of heavily subsidised competition from China and the US.
Earlier this month, the former president of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi said the EU must embrace deep reforms and spend €800bn (£670bn) a year to avert “a slow and agonising decline”.
Few expect EU leaders to agree on Draghi’s ambitious agenda. In France, Macron is weakened after snap elections created a prolonged political stalemate. Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, presides over a squabbling three-way coalition that is preoccupied with domestic politics after unprecedented victories for the far right in regional elections, with another defeat on the horizon on Sunday in Brandenburg.
One senior EU official cautioned against the idea that von der Leyen could step into a leadership vacuum. “You are only as strong as the weakest link in the [European] council.”
To get legislation passed, von der Leyen needs not only EU member states, but also the European parliament, which has more far-right MEPs hostile to the EU than ever before. “On legislation, she will have a lot of trouble,” said the senior official. “You are no longer talking about 30 nutcases. You are now talking about 150 people who are not well intentioned.”
The big tent coalition of pro-EU parties that supported von der Leyen – from her own centre-right European People’s party, the socialists, centrists and greens – will be tested. “She will be much more vulnerable and prone to shifts in majority,” the official added.
Von der Leyen’s new commission is likely to take office around 1 December. These few months before the fray may be the peak of her powers.