Ursula von der Leyen has designed a European Commission in her image and likeness. She is the president who has brought together the most power at the head of the community government and that centralization generated suspicions among some commissioners who felt ignored. The concealment, as soon as she began her second term, that she has been hospitalized for a respiratory illness has revived criticism of her presidentialism and lack of transparency.
The daily press conference offered by community government spokespersons has become an all-out battle over the last week after the German agency DPA revealed that Von der Leyen had required hospital care. Until then, his team had limited itself to reporting that he had “severe pneumonia” that forced him to suspend his public agenda for two weeks and that he was recovering from it in Hannover, where he has his home when he is not in Brussels. Von der Leyen’s spokespeople took pains to make it clear that she was still chatting with her collaborators and keeping up with office work.
The concealment has caused a cloud of dust in the press room of the Berlaymont building that the spokesperson, Paula Pinho, has dispatched alleging that she gave “critical information” about the president’s state of health.
Criticism for the lack of transparency is not new and does not only come from the media. The person who has been the EU Ombudsman for the last decade, Emily O’Reilly, reported that opacity has been increasing during this time and accused Von der Leyen of hiding information “for political reasons.” “That culture comes from above, so yes, it is probably the president and her cabinet who are establishing the culture,” he told the outlet. Political in an interview in December.
It is, therefore, Von der Leyen’s usual tone. One of the main reproaches of the Ombudsman last term was for the exchange of SMS with the owner of Pfizer when the European Commission was negotiating with the pharmaceutical company the joint purchase of vaccines against COVID-19. O’Reilly considered that these messages should be considered public documents given the German’s refusal to make them known. The matter is judicialized. The European justice also reprimanded the community government for hiding a portion of those million-dollar contracts. Another of the issues for which the Irish woman asked him for explanations was a vacation she spent in Greece with the Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
A pyramidal structure
Beyond the opacity, Von der Leyen has shown that she takes the presidential character of the European Commission to the limit by not delegating her functions while she was on leave. Can community government be presided over from the hospital? “His ability to act was never in question,” justified the spokesperson, who reiterated that he communicated with his team daily during his admission and that he was in a position to do so with the leaders “if necessary.” In fact, he had a telephone conversation with the Italian far-right Giorgia Meloni.
Von der Leyen did not give up the baton until this Wednesday, when the first vice president, Teresa Ribera, chaired the meeting of the College of Commissioners in Brussels due to her absence. The spokesperson announced this on Monday, when she clarified that she was recovering “at home” in Hannover. By then it had already been revealed that she had been hospitalized.
The German also receives criticism for the pyramidal structure she has given to the European Commission, in which her chief of staff, also German Bjoern Seibert, has enormous power.
The last legislature made the decision to eliminate lower-ranking officials from the public directory as a strong policy against leaks or possible influences on European policies. But the heavy hand is not only limited to the lowest echelons, but the commissioners themselves recognized that they were fed up with the situation.
The former Commissioner for Employment, the socialist Nicolas Schmit, criticized the lack of internal debate in the community government. “College work is important, political debate is important, we are politicians, we are not supertechnocrats who are there to manage their own affairs,” he told reporters. Of course, he did it in the middle of the European election campaign in which he was running as a candidate for the Social Democrats.
The Frenchman Thierry Breton was also critical, who in his resignation letter accused Von der Leyen of having carried out “questionable governance.” The resignation occurred after the president asked Emmanuel Macron for another name to be part of the College of Commissioners this term, when the French president had already expressed his intention for Breton to continue. The clashes with the Commissioner of the Internal Market had been a constant.
Von der Leyen controls everything that happens in the Commission and the latest structure she designed for the community government leads to overlaps in some of the key initiatives, such as the Clean Industrial Pact that Teresa Ribera and the French vice president, Stephane Sejourné, have to promote and that in the event of a clash the president will have to resolve.
After two weeks of absence, Von der Leyen will reactivate her agenda next week to attend the Davos Forum and the Plenary Session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg. It remains to be seen if he has received criticism or if he maintains the policy of opacity.
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