Ursula von der Leyen will be the People's Party candidate for the presidency of the EU Commission. The announcement was expected, anticipated and thought through to the smallest detail.
A few hours before the deadline set by the EPP, the number one European executive expressed her desire to run for an encore with her national party, the CDU.
And he started his election campaign from Berlin. Less Green Deal, more attention to competitiveness and an axiom that will last until spring: “The extreme right wants to destroy Europe.”
Von der Leyen's candidacy appears to be a re-nomination, but it is not.
In 2019 The EPP's top candidate was the current chairman and parliamentary group leader of the People's Party, Manfred Weber. The name Ursula only appeared at the European Council after the vote and was a wild card, having Angela Merkel as her deus ex machina and Emmanuel Macron as her crucial support. This time the former German defense minister, who was born in Ixelles and grew up on bread and Europe, has to go into the field personally. She is delicately navigating her dual role: president of the Commission, which represents the general interest, and candidate of the EPP. Much will depend on the results of the June 6-9 vote, but for now von der Leyen appears to have no opponents: the only other top candidates announced are the Socialists. It responds to the name of current Labor Commissioner Nicolas Schmit of Luxembourg and to an election that many in Brussels saw as implicit support for the outgoing president.
The political fight actually won't be much between the EPP and the Socialists, but primarily between pro-Europeans and anti-EU parties. The rise of the right and the sovereigntists is a constant in recent polls and could upset the community's previously solid balance of power, based on the popular-socialist-liberal triad. It is no coincidence that von der Leyen immediately made one point clear: “The most important thing is democracy, the rule of law and the peace that we have built together,” and “the task of this election campaign” is “to achieve this.” “It is clear to our opponents, Putin and his friends, be it the AfD, Marine Le Pen, Wilders or other extreme forces: they want to destroy Europe,” he said at a press conference from Berlin.
The names von der Leyen mentioned are no coincidence. In the EPP, the trend is to enter into dialogue with one part of the right and exclude another, on the basis of three conditions that Weber has been repeating for weeks: pro-EU, pro-Ukraine and supporter of the rule of law. The aim is therefore to win the support of the right parties that are considered more open to dialogue, starting with Giorgia Meloni's FdI. Von der Leyen has been focusing on her for some time to secure her confirmation, with positive results so far. Among the 27, the current president has a big advantage. Although Berlin is led by a socialist chancellor, it has already pledged its support.
Pedro Sanchez's Spain will not be beaten while Macron, who took advantage of the EU's acceleration in European defense, had his advantage. Von der Leyen needs a qualified majority of 26 and is likely to get it. The situation is different in the European Chamber, where the EPP, S&D and Renew majority are in danger of being too narrow to sleep peacefully. The support of part of the right or, alternatively, the Greens will be necessary. But they are the first that the EPP has been dealing with for some time. In this sense, the development of the group of conservatives and reformists in which the FdI is based is being carefully examined in the People's Party. And the hypothesis of Fidesz joining, announced by Viktor Orban himself, would make Meloni's dialogue with the moderate center-right party much more difficult.
Von der Leyen will conclude her mandate with two measures that will be the pillars of the next five years: European Defense and the Sprint to Competitiveness of a War-Besieged Continent, weakened by China's commercial aggressiveness and intimidated by Donald Trump's return to the US. The Green Deal will remain a priority, but as he has already shown to farmers, von der Leyen will tone down his push. And then there is the variable of emergencies that marked Ursula's first term in office, when she was confronted first with Covid and then with the war in Ukraine.
Read the full article on ANSA.it