European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is to defend her record in office with a make-or-break speech in Maastricht, amid a growing chorus of criticism.
Reversing an earlier decision not to attend, the embattled EC leader will on April 29 join a debate with the lead candidates (or Spitzenkandidaten) of seven other Europe-wide political groups, each of whom would dearly like to take her job after the European Parliament elections in June.
“I look forward to discussing some key issues for young voters,” wrote von der Leyen in what was only her 27th post on the X account devoted to what appears her somewhat unenthusiastic re-election campaign.
Event organisers Studio Europa Maastricht noted: “Each contender for the office of chief policymaker of the European Union will represent their own political party on the podium in Maastricht, the birthplace of the 1992 Maastricht Treaty that established the European Union.”
Von der Leyen has preferred to campaign from the Berlaymont building where she presides over the EC and, in a departure from her predecessors, also lives.
Her taking part in the April 29 debate will likely be seen as a meek acceptance that she is only one list leader alongside figures such as Bas Eickhout from the European Green Party and Anders Vistisen from the Identity and Democracy Party.
As von der Leyen’s re-election woes grow, French President Emmanuel Macron has spoken with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni about installing former European Central Bank president Mario Draghi in the EC top job instead.
Draghi, who also has been floated as a possible successor to Charles Michel as President of the European Council, is admired in Brussels for “saving the euro” during the Eurozone’s 2012 sovereign debt crisis. In a July 2012 speech, he pledged: “The ECB is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro. And believe me, it will be enough.”
Macron has form in these kinds of backroom manoeuvres over who occupies the Berlaymont building’s top-floor office.
After he torpedoed previous front-runner Manfred Weber as lacking experience in 2019, the French President “was instrumental in making Ursula von der Leyen the European Commission president five years ago”, noted former Portuguese Europe minister Bruno Maçães.
Macron threw his weight behind then-German chancellor Angela Merkel’s loyal former defence minister von der Leyen, although she only secured a razor-thin approval by nine votes in the European Parliament.
Draghi, though, is 76, and “frugal” countries such as the Netherlands and Germany are sceptical of his history of defending joint-borrowing.
He would also likely be a technocratic EC president, in much the same manner as his stint as Italy’s prime minister in 2021 and 2022.
It was largely because von der Leyen needed to court support from Meloni that she tasked Draghi with drafting a high-level report for an April 16th European Council summit on increasing the single market’s competitiveness.
The behind-closed-doors deal-making will begin in earnest the week after June’s EP elections, when European Union leaders meet on June 17. In the meantime, Macron – who has criticised von de Leyen’s EC as “over-politicised” – could be genuinely canvassing for a replacement or he may simply be putting political pressure on her for concessions on future policy.
Still, regardless of a possible second von der Leyen term, the EU “needs a Super Mario these days”, according to political analyst Peter Mudri.
