N. Peter Kramer’s Weekly Column
EU leaders, member states, MEPs, EP political groups have had it with Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. She managed to ram through the controversial Mercosur deal, contrary to the wishes of especially France. Pushing the idea of a fast-track EU accession for Ukraine was less successfully, most member states wouldn’t hear of it. Her decision to send a European commissioner to a meeting of Donald Trump’s Board of Peace didn’t go down well in many EU capitals. Last week France took the unusual step of publicly castigating VDL for overstepping the Commission’s mandate on foreign policy.
Recently, the Commission President said the EU had made a ‘strategic mistake’ in moving away from nuclear energy. She betrayed by saying that not only her political mentor Angela Merkel, who halted one overnight the use of nuclear energy. But also the former Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans also known as the Climate-Pope.
On Monday, VDL told the EU ambassadors ,’We have to be honest that we cannot solve every global issue or perfectly reconcile our values and interests on each occasion’. A more realist approach to foreign policy shared by many of her centre-right allies. But to the socialist and left side her comment sounded like a step back from the EU value-based foreign engagement. European Council President, the socialist Antonio Costa said, “It is in our interest to ensure that the world remains rules-based and cooperative’. The Socialist Commissioner Teresa Ribera was also not ‘amused’. And the socialist leader in the EP, Iratxe Garca Perez said she hoped that Von der Leyen ‘will be able to clarify her statements’.
Well, that was what Von der Leyen did. Today speaking to MEPs in Strasbourg, she struck a more conciliatory tone, ‘Our unwavering commitment to the pursuit of peace, to the principles of the UN Charter and the international law is as central today as it was at our creation, and we will always uphold these principles’. Are the socialists content with VDL’s shift? It is not their first political collision. The Israel – Hamas/Palestine conflict drove also a wedge between the more moderate Commission President and the rabiate anti-Israel socialists.
