Name? Ursula von der Leyen
Westphalian identity? European
Age? 62
Why is she in the news? One year ago today, von der Leyen started her five-year journey as President of the European Commission; making today a good time to talk about the state of the EU.
Why do we care? As mentioned a couple of times before, the EU is currently debating over an enormous amount of money (1.4 trillion Euros) for the Covid-19 recovery fund. This money will shape EU policy in areas such as digitalisation, foreign policy and global warming–all of which are critical to the world of international relations.
Why should you care? Not only should you care about global warming in general, but you should also care because it is the issue von der Leyen has made the most promises towards. While she did pass the European Green Deal and began a global race to carbon neutrality, we have only heard fancy words without seeing any real change.
Who else cares? Boris Johnson. Brexit has been another significant issue to deal with for von der Leyen. In one month exactly, the UK will leave the EU with no trade agreement currently in sight. Von der Leyen has one month to agree with PM Johnson, push the agreement through the European parliament, and then hope that not a single national parliament will strike the agreement down.
Any further comments? Overall, we can say that the Commission gained one thing under von der Leyen: Power. Never before has the Commission been so powerful. “Europe will be forged in crises,” said Jean Monnet; one of the founding fathers of the EU, “and will be the sum of the solutions adopted for those crises.” Von der Leyen has plenty of crises to deal with and is gaining more influence with every single one of them. In all these matters mentioned above, individual states transfer more power to the supranational level (aka to Ursula).
