European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is running into unexpected problems in her quest for a second five-year stint as the EU’s top official. After coming under pressure from the Left to renounce any collaboration with the parliamentary Right, now von der Leyen is facing trouble from the Right, with conservative MEPs demanding her departure as a prerequisite for cooperation with her centrist European People’s Party (EPP) faction.
“We will work to ensure that the EPP drops Ursula von der Leyen as Commission president,” said Sweden Democrats MEP and ECR vice chair Charlie Weimers in an interview with Swedish media this week.
Fearing an end of liberal hegemony, progressives within the EU Parliament have previously clamoured to warn about a budding deal between the ECR and EPP.
Originally expected to be reappointed after June’s European elections with ease, von der Leyen has been plagued in recent months by a series of scandals over renewed investigations into her handling of the EU’s flawed vaccine rollout as well as Europe-wide protests against her Green Deal.
Von der Leyen is currently on a tour of Europe, ostensibly to rally support for EPP-affiliated parties. How that role is distinguishable from her campaigning for reelection as Commission president is, however, unclear.
In a sign of her diminishing influence on the European stage, von der Leyen received a frosty response from her normally reliable EPP partners Forza Italia, who refused to allow the Commission chief to join the party’s EU election campaign launch in Rome on Monday.
“Ursula von der Leyen is now a crippled horse,” Forza Senator Licia Ronzulli told the press, adding that her presidency has been “weak” and claiming she had allowed “ideological extremist impulses” to capture the EU agenda.
The EPP has been repeatedly put on the backfoot by a grassroots surge in discontent over von der Leyen’s Green New Deal, culminating in a series of farmers’ protests across the European capitals.
Aside from challengers from the left and right, von der Leyen is also facing a looming battle with French President Emmanuel Macron, who is rumoured to be backing former Italian premier Mario Draghi to take over the Commission role.
Her €5.2 million re-election campaign has also been hit by trouble as media revelations show chaos at the “understaffed” German marketing firm running it.
Should she be approved by member states at the European Council, von der Leyen will require a minimum of 353 MEPs to back her agenda for the next European Commission in the weeks after the European elections.
