The claim second term by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was expected. Yesterday it became official. Germany’s Christian Democratic Party (CDU) has appointed 65-year-old Von der Leyen as head of the ballot for the upcoming European elections.
The CDU board’s decision was unanimous, party chairman Friedrich Merz said at a joint press conference with von der Leyen in Berlin.
He hopes for a unanimous decision also at the conference of the European People’s Party (EVP) on March 6-7 in Bucharest to nominate the current president of the Commission as head of the European People’s Party in the European elections on June 9.
The European People’s Party is the largest group in the European Parliament and the only one that has MEPs from all EU member countries. As it is expected to emerge as the first force in the upcoming European elections, its head, Ursula von der Leyen, will claim “rightfully” her election as president of the Commission for a second five-year term.
“The EU must ensure its security in the broadest sense of the term and at the same time the well-being of EU citizens,” said Friedrich Merz, singling out the commission president’s offer in her term so far. With her re-election, he added, Ursula von der Leyen “will remain the European partner-interlocutor for America”.
The president of the Commission noted that her term began in 2019 three months before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, which the EU member states “managed to tame together”. With a series of measures, the EU “prevented an economic recession” and laid the foundations for the future.
Also, “the EU’s reaction was immediate” to Russia’s war against Ukraine, facing the biggest energy crisis of the last 40 years.
The most important goal in her second term will be “the strengthening of democracy and the defense of Europe’s values”, said the president of the Commission.
With her re-election, she wants to establish a position of “Defence Commissioner” in the Commission to strengthen the EU’s defense capabilities “on an industrial basis”, Von der Leyen said, in “close coordination” with NATO. Priority will also be given to strengthening Europe’s competitiveness, protecting the climate, managing Artificial Intelligence, reducing bureaucracy.
Von der Leyen owes her first term to French President Emmanuel Macron. With the assumption of the European Central Bank by the French Christine Lagarde, in 2019 the Commission had to pass into German hands.
Because Macron did not want Marcus Weber, who was inexperienced in matters of governance, as president of the Commission, who was the head of the European People’s Party and came first in the European elections, he proposed to Chancellor Merkel the then Minister of Defense of Germany.
Von der Leyen’s relations with the current leadership of her party are not clear, in Merz’s CDU they consider her too “green”. On the other hand, in the current Solz government, the three parties had agreed to send a commissioner from the Greens to Brussels.
Thus, the only way for the Christian Democrat Von der Leyen to be re-elected president of the Commission is to claim the position as head of the European People’s Party, which will be the largest group in the next European Parliament.
