Ursula von der Leyen came to power promising a “geopolitical Commission.” Five years later, Europe is neither geopolitical nor competitive—it is, instead, bureaucratic, demoralized, and increasingly divided. Her legacy risks being defined by two of her flagship priorities that have both collapsed under their own contradictions: migration and competitiveness.
On migration, the Commission’s rhetoric of solidarity and shared responsibility has translated into chaos. The new Migration and Asylum Pact—hailed by Brussels as a “historic compromise”—is in practice a coercive mechanism that forces member states to either accept migrant quotas or pay financial penalties for refusing them. For von der Leyen, this is “European unity in action.” For many capitals, it is a quiet form of blackmail.
The Patriots for Europe group, Fidesz in Hungary, and Italy’s Lega have denounced the system as an assault on national sovereignty and social cohesion. Even in countries traditionally open to immigration, fatigue is growing. France, Germany, and the Netherlands have seen a record rise in anti-immigration sentiment as local authorities struggle to accommodate new arrivals while citizens face housing shortages and rising costs.
But von der Leyen insists on the same message: “Europe must stand together.” The problem is that Brussels’ version of unity always means centralization—and a transfer of responsibility from national governments to unelected bureaucrats. By turning migration into a moral test rather than a matter of governance, the Commission has pushed its own dead end.
The same logic applies to Europe’s competitiveness. While the U.S. and Asia race ahead in innovation, energy independence, and industrial policy, the European Union has chosen regulation as its religion. Under von der Leyen, the Green Deal has become both political dogma and an economic straitjacket, resulting in soaring energy prices, suffocating red tape, and an exodus of industry toward friendlier jurisdictions.
Nowhere is this more evident than in manufacturing. Car plants are relocating to North America, lured by the Inflation Reduction Act and lower energy costs. European farmers, once the backbone of the Union, are drowning under environmental directives that make production more expensive than imports. The Mercosur agreement, pushed through by von der Leyen, only deepens that wound by flooding the market with agricultural products that do not meet EU standards.
Even the Commission’s supposed climate leadership has become a liability. Germany’s economy—the engine of Europe—is entering its third consecutive quarter of stagnation. France faces record deficits. Southern Europe, constrained by fiscal rules, can barely keep up. Yet Brussels continues to issue new regulations on packaging, emissions, and labor standards as if bureaucracy could replace growth.
What Von der Leyen calls “strategic autonomy” is increasingly a euphemism for managed decline. The EU’s industrial base is shrinking, its energy costs remain the highest in the developed world, and its skilled workforce is leaving for better prospects abroad. The continent that once built Airbus and Siemens now builds frameworks and task forces.
In her speeches, Von der Leyen still speaks the language of leadership—“resilience,” “transition,” “solidarity.” But those words ring hollow in a Europe where borders are porous, industries are closing, and disillusionment runs deep.
Her defenders argue that she has held the Union together through crises—the pandemic, Ukraine, and energy shocks. But holding it together is not the same as leading it. Stability has become paralysis; unity, conformity. Von der Leyen has kept Europe intact only by emptying it of direction.
