“She will likely be much more in command of the whole lot,” mentioned one EU official who, like others quoted on this piece, was granted anonymity to talk freely. “Who thought that was even doable?”
It was the end result of months of private and non-private technique to take away the dissenting voices of her first time period as European Fee president. From the primary staff, none of the naysayers stay. Large personalities reminiscent of France’s Thierry Breton and the Netherlands’ Frans Timmermans at the moment are gone.
Throughout her first time period — during which she confronted a worldwide pandemic and a struggle on the EU’s doorstep — she developed a status for making unilateral choices, overstepping her job description, chopping different EU leaders out of the decision-making, and talking solely to a handful of advisers. Consequently, she gained the nickname Queen Ursula in Brussels.
The morning of von der Leyen’s announcement of her second high staff, she refused to inform the European Parliament, her companions within the strategy of approving commissioners, who she was assigning to which job. As an alternative, she left a gathering with the Parliament’s high leaders and went straight right into a press convention during which she revealed all the main points. She was later accused of “contempt” for the Parliament.
Hours earlier than, she satisfied the French she would give their commissioner nominee an exceptionally necessary job in the event that they swapped out Breton. On Tuesday, as she revealed job descriptions, they realized they’d been bamboozled right into a watered-down place.
“Anybody who thought that she may have modified her fashion, her will to maintain tight management, was on the very least naive,” mentioned an EU diplomat.