Behold Ursula von der Leyen’s transformation from green dove to military hawk.
As the European Commission president announced her bid for another term on Monday, von der Leyen was unequivocal: Her ambition is now to make Europe more “competitive” — a catch-all word that in 2024 means more military might, more Europe First purchases and more industry-friendly climate rules.
For the former German defense minister, the message reflects the current geopolitical climate. Europe is struggling with Russia’s warmongering, which is entering a third year just as U.S. support for Ukraine stalls and Donald Trump stampedes toward another potential White House term, threatening to abandon NATO allies along the way.
The Continent is also awash with anger over its climate policies, with convoys of tractors clogging capitals in protest of looming rules meant to get the EU to climate neutrality by 2050.
Von der Leyen’s response is two-fold. On the military front, she wants a new EU defense commissioner and for countries to join forces on their defense spending. And on the climate front, she is offering regulatory concessions and vowing to ask businesses, “What do you need?”
Politically, it’s a necessary pivot for the 65-year old German, who will need to secure support from her own center-right European People’s Party and from the next European Parliament, which is predicted to make a sharp right turn.
At the same time, the 65-year-old German will have to walk a fine line to defend her own legacy. Von der Leyen has vowed to “keep the direction of travel for the big topics” — such as the Green Deal and transforming Europe for a digital age — that she championed in her first term.
But, as the EU’s top executive acknowledged on Monday, a lot has changed since she first entered the Berlaymont.
“The world today is completely different to 2019,” von der Leyen said in Berlin.
Brussels is, too — or it soon will be.
The current set of European Parliament lawmakers was elected at the height of the Greta Thunberg-inspired youth marches that catapulted climate change into the political mainstream and boosted green parties across the Continent. Under pressure to tackle global warming, von der Leyen launched the European Green Deal after entering office, declaring it the EU’s “man on the moon moment.”
This time around, the mood is different. Angry farmers, not climate activists, are blockading roads around Paris and Berlin, with many complaining about the EU’s growing list of environmental regulations. Green parties have fallen in the polls. Europeans are now more worried about economic and geopolitical instability, immigration, the rising cost of living and the war in Ukraine than about climate change.
Yet the message from the EU’s own scientific advisors is blunt and unchanging: Europe isn’t on track to meet its climate targets and must do more to cut planet-warming emissions — especially in agriculture. But there’s little appetite for expanding the Green Deal: Von der Leyen’s own party is the loudest advocate for a pause in environmental lawmaking.
In her press conference on Monday, climate was barely mentioned. Instead, von der Leyen stressed topics like competitiveness, migration and defense.
Those new priorities do not just reflect the changed geopolitics. They are also key to help von der Leyen lock in her second term, which would make her only the fourth European Commission president to do so.
On Monday, von der Leyen humbly said that she “would like to apply for a second term.” Yet the announcement was anticipated for months in Brussels, where EU diplomats and officials are already working on the assumption that von der Leyen is not only seeking but will get another five years in the Berlaymont, the European Commission's headquarters.
To lock that in, von der Leyen is carefully maneuvering to accommodate the wishes of her supporters.
For Friedrich Merz, the head of von der Leyen’s center-right Christian Democratic Union party, keeping German businesses competitive is the top priority, something he was keen to emphasize standing next to von der Leyen on Monday. Merz, who has said he thinks politicians attach too much significance to climate change, views the Greens as the conservatives’ main opponent, even as the far right soars in the polls.
Other national parties in the European People’s Party, the European Parliament’s biggest group, have also stressed that the focus should be less on ambitious climate goals and more on how to keep European businesses afloat while reaching those climate goals. Combining those two goals will be key, von der Leyen said Monday.
To stay in office, von der Leyen needs to be nominated by European leaders and confirmed by the European Parliament after the European election in June.
In 2019, she was placed in office with the support of the EU’s self-described pro-European parties: the conservative EPP, the center-left Socialists and the centrist Renew group. That only gave her a narrow majority: 383 votes, slightly above the 374 threshold.
With the far right surging across Europe, von der Leyen could struggle to reassemble that coalition, potentially having to scramble for votes within either the Greens or the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR). Von der Leyen has kept Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni close, whose Brothers of Italy party wields power within the ECR.
Here as well, von der Leyen is walking a fine line: appealing to the conservative right while pushing back against the far right. In an unusually strong rebuttal at Monday’s press conference, von der Leyen name-checked several far-right leaders, including the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders and France’s Marine Le Pen.
And she directly implored voters: “Strengthen the center.”
It was von der Leyen’s transformation from executive to candidate.
Barbara Moens and Zia Weise reported from Brussels. Hans von der Burchard reported from Berlin.