The President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen has stressed that the European Union remained a “peace project” amid commemorations of the end of the Second World War. Opposition parties disagreed.
As people celebrated and remembered the surrender of the Nazis in Europe across the world, von der Leyen posted a clip on social media of her speech in Strasbourg on May 7.
In it, she highlighted the fact that after the war, half of Europe remained occupied under Russian rule and that today, a new armed conflict was raging on the continent. She then called for Ukraine to be allowed to join the EU.
“Eighty years on, we stand at another decisive moment in the history of our continent. The war in Ukraine will eventually come to a halt. But the way the war ends will shape our continent for generations to come,” von der Leyen said.
“The future of Ukrainians is at stake but so is ours.
“Because we know in our history, peace and European integration have always gone hand in hand. So let’s bring Ukraine into our Union. Let’s walk the path of peace together. Slava Ukraini! Long live Europe!” she added.
Eighty years ago, enemies laid down their arms.
Since then, we, Europeans, have built something extraordinary: a Union of peace, democracy, and solidarity. An anchor of stability.
Our Union was born as a peace project, and it remains one today. pic.twitter.com/mbmTBmBpua
— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) May 8, 2025
Not everyone was impressed.
Belgian MEP with the Patriots for Europe group Tom Vandendriessche told Brussels Signal on May 8 that the EC President’s policies were not as peaceful as she claimed.
“The European Union was once founded, from the ashes of WWII, as an economic cooperation for prosperity and peace,” he said.
“Von der Leyen is turning the EU into an arms supplier that ultimately wants us to march into the trenches. This madness must stop.”
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán focused on the wished-for accession of Ukraine into the EU. “Currently, Ukraine’s accession would bankrupt Europe. No deal. Forget it,” he said.
According to Orbán, countries have only been allowed into the bloc because they benefited those who were already in it. He claimed the opposite would be the case with Ukraine.
He further warned that Ukraine controlled 40 per cent of the EU’s arable land and would flood the market with cheap crops, potentially crippling current member states’ agriculture sectors and draining the bloc’s resources if it were to join.
Finally, he claimed von der Leyen wanted “to pour further billions into Ukraine, pull Europe further into a losing war, and rush a bankrupt state into the EU “.
On the Left, there was also much pushback. German MEP of the Özlem Alev Demirel party accused von der Leyen in the plenary of shedding “crocodile tears”.
Demirel said Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu was escalating the war in Gaza without much reaction from the EU. “Were he to annex the entire Gaza, you would say nothing,” she said of von der Leyen.
“Yes, you talk a lot about Ukraine but you don’t tell the truth.”
She said the EC chief only helped the Ukrainians via credits “bound to structural reforms in Ukraine, which are in the interest of European corporations”.
Demirel claimed von der Leyen did not care about the people in Ukraine but was after their country’s riches and was pushing for the hegemony of the EU as a power block, not caring for peace or people.
Despite the EC President describing the EU as a peace project, she has also been calling for European rearmament and more European military co-operation, with a bigger role for Brussels.
To allow member states to increase their defence spending, the EC said earlier this year it would activate the national escape clause of the Stability and Growth Pact.
That would allow member states to take on more debt and increase their defence spending by up to €650 billion over four years without triggering the excessive deficit procedure.
Foreign weapons and defence technology makers seem poised to cash in on Europe’s defence boom, sidelining the continent’s own industry despite soaring military budgets. https://t.co/cL4TFm6XHS
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) April 28, 2025
