Charles Michel has said Ursula von der Leyen is “not up to the issues” facing Europe, a day before the Commission president delivers her annual State of the Union address.
The former European Council president, speaking to Jim Nejman on the RTL podcast Quel monde, said too much of the Commission’s energy went on “rather superficial communication”.
He said the judgment was not personal. “I see today that the assessment I make is a general one. That shows there is no personal animosity.”
Michel said Europeans had shown “such weakness” in response to the trade terms set by Donald Trump and that the Commission bore “an absolutely crushing responsibility”.
He pointed to Canada’s prime minister as a figure “opening a path I think is interesting”. He granted the Commission some progress on carbon but said the Union was “missing the boat”. “Don’t say I’m going to be negative about this Commission again.”
Michel and von der Leyen served together from 2019 to 2024. Their relationship was strained from early in the term and never recovered from the 2021 “Sofagate” meeting in Ankara, when Michel took the only spare chair beside Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and von der Leyen was left on a sofa.
Michel has since said protocol was followed and accused the Commission of using the episode to grab institutional power.
He left office in 2024 and was succeeded by António Costa. In April he told The Brussels Times that he had never found it so hard to work with a colleague and described her style as “super authoritarian”.
Former European council president Charles Michel attacked European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, accusing her of running an “authoritarian” leadership, thus upsetting the European Union’s institutional balance.
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