Her desire for stronger EU action on competitiveness, defence, digital and climate policies may not command support against a changed political backdrop
President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen: set for re-election, she faces a testing political environment in her second term is set to become president of the European Commission for a second term after the European elections boosted her centre-right party group’s position. Since 2019 her role became more political as she managed crises on Covid 19, the Ukraine war and Gaza and pursued ambitious targets on climate change and foreign policy.
Already her retreat on aspects of the Green New Deal she sponsored in the face of right-wing opposition has disillusioned other centrists. Her impulsive initial support for Israel on Gaza without a call for legal proportionality in its response to the Hamas atrocities antagonised leaders andand elsewhere. Others resent her instinctive proximity to more self-assertive US foreign policy and economic positions without adequate regard for Europe’s own interests.
Much of this can be put down to the nature of an EU becoming more political in its policy-making and more geopolitical in its exercise of power at global level. The European elections provide a real if still under-developed democratic mandate and von der Leyen’s style and substance reflects their outcomes. She has a responsibility to match her politics to the EU’s collective capacities and political direction and then pursue the compromises and bargains to realise them.
The most important task she faces will be to hold steady and pursue agreements that can strengthen the EU’s ability to handle these economic, climate, migration and international challenges despite potentially deeper differences between the conflicting forces now at play in European politics.
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