Von der Leyen’s bumpy road to becoming Commission president by Agata Gostyńska-Jakubowska
The European Parliament has narrowly elected Ursula von der Leyen as the first female Commission president. Now she faces the difficult task of assembling a team of commissioners to deliver her priorities. On July 16th the European Parliament elected Ursula von der Leyen to be the next president of the European Commission. She scraped through with only nine votes more than the required absolute majority of 374. But her problems do not end there. Now she must put together a team of commissioners that can help her fulfil the promises she made to secure her election, and convince members of the European Parliament (MEPs) to approve her entire college of commissioners so that it can take office on November 1st. Von der Leyen was elected in a secret ballot. But although the European People’s Party (EPP), the liberal Renew Europe group (formerly ALDE) and the Socialists and Democrats (S&D) officially backed her, a significant number of MEPs from these groups voted against von der Leyen. Had all the parliamentarians in these groups supported her, she would have won 444 votes.
Image: © European Union, 2019
Some pro-European MEPs, including the Greens, opposed von der Leyen because she did not come through the so-called Spitzenkandidaten process. This system was designed by the European Parliament to ensure that the European Council nominates the ‘lead candidate’ of one of the European political parties for the Commission presidency. Many MEPs argued
that they could not endorse a candidate chosen behind closed doors by EU leaders, and one whose views were unknown to the wider public. Unlike von der Leyen, lead candidates such as the centre-right Manfred Weber and the centreleft Frans Timmermans have spent the last few months campaigning across the EU on the assumption that one of them would become the Commission president. Other MEPs worried that von der Leyen would struggle to stand up to member-states on issues such as the rule of law. She was proposed by French President Emmanuel Macron as a compromise candidate after EU leaders failed to back Timmermans, who as Commission first vice president had repeatedly clashed with Warsaw and Budapest over democratic backsliding. Von der Leyen has instead struck a more conciliatory tone, arguing that the EU needs to overcome its East/West divisions. Some MEPs also worried that she might be too German in her approach to the management and reform of the eurozone and insist on a strict interpretation of the EU’s fiscal rules. Before the vote, von der Leyen published political guidelines to respond to some of these concerns:
She pledged to improve the ‘lead candidate’