She’s one of Europe’s most powerful women. A vaccine spat could derail her big plans for the continent.
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It’s likely that, a couple of weeks ago, you’d never heard the name Ursula von der Leyen.
President of the European Commission, the European Union’s executive branch and most powerful institution, is not a job that enjoys the fame or the grandeur of a national leader. So if your name’s appearing in the media, chances are, something’s probably gone very wrong.
The EU’s unedifying spat with the United Kingdom over Covid-19 vaccines has dragged von der Leyen and her management style into the spotlight.
After Brussels got jittery that its vaccination program was lagging behind, thanks to a shortage of doses, the Commission proposed placing export controls on vaccine manufacturers, meaning the EU could monitor — and potentially prevent — vaccines leaving the bloc.
As part of this proposal, the Commission said that those controls could be applied to vaccines going from the Republic of Ireland (part of the EU) into Northern Ireland (part of the UK).
Critics immediately panned Brussels for even toying with the idea of placing restrictions on the Irish border, for fear it could lead to the return of sectarian, cross-border violence on the island of Ireland.
A series of hurried, worried phone calls took place between European capitals who had not been consulted on this move — including, bafflingly, Dublin.
EU diplomats and officials in Brussels were embarrassed by what appeared to be a unilateral threat from the Commission to the UK, a sovereign nation, and a clear risk to civil society in Northern Ireland — a weird flex for an institution which purports to promote and protect peace and civility.
Embarrassment turned to anger when von der Leyen and her team tried to lay the blame on her executive vice president, Valdis Dombrovskis.
The spat has been temporarily resolved, but there is lingering anger aimed at the Commission for threatening to take such dramatic measures. Naturally, much of that anger has been aimed at the head of the institution herself.
Ever since the vaccine spat, von der Leyen has been under an abnormal level of scrutiny — even for someone holding such powerful office — and plenty of critics have been more than happy to draw comparisons between her perceived failures in Berlin and Brussels.
Some believe the reason so many have been happy to take potshots at her is down to jealousy of her privileged background.Von der Leyen — Germany’s former defense minister — is not your typical Eurocrat. Her father was a very powerful politician, serving as Prime Minister of the German state of Lower Saxony and as one of the first European civil servants.
“She belongs to our political elite,” says Erich Vad, a former military policy advisor to Chancellor Angela Merkel, and a close ally of the German leader. “Not only is she from an upper-class background, but she was also one of Angela Merkel’s favorites.”
“In German politics, many will have been jealous of her and that can make working in Berlin very difficult,” Vad explains.
Whether people are jealous or not, there are comparisons to draw between her handling of scandals as defense minister and of the pandemic.
In 2013, when she was appointed to the role, von der Leyen inherited armed forces in need of reform.
“She wanted to make the German forces relevant for the 21st century by making it easier for women and people with families to serve,” says Sophia Besch, a Berlin-based senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform.
“She wanted to root out soldiers who had sympathies for far-right politics and overhaul how the armed forces spent its budget,” Besch explains. “The problem was, she picked fights with lots of senior figures and became unpopular with the troops and chain of command.”
Von der Leyen was widely criticized for spending hundreds of millions of euros on private contractors to help with her reforms. While she was personally cleared of any wrongdoing by German lawmakers, she acknowledged that things had gone wrong, blaming the failures on her subordinates.
In 2017, Germany’s military intelligence service reported 275 suspected cases of right-wing extremism in the forces. The cases included soldiers involved in planning violent attacks and owning Nazi memorabilia.
At the time, von der Leyen enraged the military’s senior command by saying she intended to address the “burning issues” of “where leadership and accountability have failed.”
Long-term observers of von der Leyen recognize this playbook and have been faintly amused to see the strategy of blame and fix repeat itself during the vaccine spat.
“Her style of governing was always to create a tight circle of loyalists around her,” says a former colleague who still works for the German government. “They protected her when scandals broke by deflecting blame and placing her at the front of trying to fix whatever has gone wrong.”
German lawmaker Fritz Felgentreu, from the Social Democratic Party, who serves on the parliamentary defense committee, takes a cynical view of this approach to public relations.
“I am not sure she was a great defense minister or even that interested in the armed forces,” says Felgentreu. “I think she wanted the job to make her case that she could succeed Merkel.”
