Why is President von der Leyen gaslighting EU voters?

Launching her campaign for a second term this week, the EU president kept saying she "ran in 2019". That is false. In fact, she destroyed the possibility for anyone to run for EU president.

Memories are short in Brussels, where a constant carousel of new commissioners, ministers, MEPs and journalists means this town lacks the institutional memory of national capitals. This means that politicians can often get away with claiming things about the past which are not true, because few have been here long enough to call them out. But Ursula von der Leyen’s spectacular exercise in gaslighting this week takes the cake - especially since she is creating ‘alternative facts’ about something that happened just five years ago.

Launching her “campaign” on Monday as the center-right European Peoples Party’s “lead candidate” for the upcoming EU election in June, von der Leyen declared, “I ran in 2019 because I firmly believe in Europe.” But she didn’t run in the last EU election in 2019, six other people did. They campaigned, and held televised presidential debates like the one in the photo above. Do you see von der Leyen in that photo? No. That’s because she wasn’t running in that election in any way, not even to be an MEP. At the time of the election in June 2019 she was an obscure German defence minister few outside Germany had ever heard of. She was appointed out of the blue by national leaders who ignored the election campaign that had been run by the actual candidates - an act so controversial that von der Leyen only survived her conformation vote in the Parliament by nine votes.

Why would von der Leyen and her EPP group distort history so flagrantly? The explanation is a tale of institutional power struggles, democratic deficit, bruised egos and a whodunnit murder mystery which asks: who killed the Spitzenkandidat? The EPP is pretending that von der Leyen was a candidate in the last election as part of a larger ruse pretending that there is an election for Commission President this year at all.

What color was your bus Ursula?

The EU’s first presidential election

Until 2014, the Commission President (which is effectively the EU head of government akin to a prime minister) was chosen by a majority vote of EU national leaders. Starting in 2009 with the creation of two new positions - European Council President (chairman) and EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs (foreign minister), this was done as part of a horse-trading exercise for the EU’s four “top jobs” - along with European Parliament President (speaker). These are in theory supposed to be doled out in a politically and geographically balanced way between the EU’s three centrist groups: the center-right EPP, center-left Party of European Socialists (PES) and liberal ALDE (Renew), reflecting their strength in the election result. Since then, the big prize of Commission President has always gone to the EPP, the High Representative to PES, the Council chair to the Liberals or EPP, and the parliament speaker split between EPP and PES during the term.

The problem with this approach isn’t just that the leader is chosen in a completely opaque and often illogical process behind closed doors. It also has usually led to lowest-common-denominator, low-profile appointments because it has proven impossible to appoint anyone who has either displeased some national governments or who were seen as potentially challenging the Council or national governments.

In an effort to inject more democracy into the process of choosing the EU’s president, and to get stronger presidents, the European Parliament came up with the Spitzenkandidat (German for lead candidate) process ahead of the 2014 election. The idea is that the EU’s six political groups are supposed to select a presidential candidate (through primary votes if they wish), and those candidates campaign and debate in the weeks leading up to the election. Like in a parliamentary democracy, if voters like the message of the prime minister candidate at the top of the ticket, then they vote for the candidate for parliament in their district from that person’s party. So if you like Ursula von der Leyen, you’re supposed to vote for the national EPP party in your country (for instance you would vote for a Partido Popular MEP in Spain). The candidate from the group which wins the most seats becomes Commission president. They used a new line that had been added into the EU’s constitution by the 2009 Lisbon Treaty - that the president should be selected "taking into account the elections to the European Parliament" - as the legal underpinning.

The political groups took the process seriously, and the groups nominated high-caliber candidates. The EPP ran a primary where former Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker ran against former French Foreign Minister (and later Brexit negotiator) Michel Barnier, beating him. As the EPP’s candidate Juncker criss-crossed Europe in a full American-style campaign, complete with a campaign bus. The PES chose their leader Martin Schulz, the Liberals chose former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, and the far-left GUE group chose former Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. They faced off in a televised debate on 15 May 2014 that aired on public broadcasters across the EU. It was the first-ever live televised format to bring democratic political debate to a pan-European level, produced by the same European Broadcasting Union production company that does the Eurovision Song Contest.

The EPP won the most seats (29%), but there was a problem. The Council of 27 national heads of government, who still have the constitutional role of choosing the president, hadn’t signed up to this plan. The Parliament was hoping that by simply running it without their permission, they could pressure them into accepting it after the fact. It worked. Germany’s Merkel and France’s Hollande, who liked Juncker anyway, said yes. But there were two ‘no’ votes. The UK’s David Cameron and Hungary’s Viktor Orban voted to reject Juncker, saying by accepting him the Council would be surrendering their constitutionally-guaranteed right to choose the Commission President (effectively making Council only a rubber-stamp for the peoples’ vote, like the US electoral college). Cameron and Orban were outvoted.

Democracy betrayed

Flash forward to 2019. Candidates were again nominated by the political groups. They again faced off in a debate aired across Europe. The EPP again secured the most seats, leading to the expectation that their candidate Manfred Weber, the leader of the group in the European Parliament, would become president. But there was a problem this time, and his name was Emmanuel Macron. Like Cameron before him, Macron opposed the idea of the Council surrendering the power to appoint the EU’s president. But unlike Cameron, Macron had political clout in Europe. He used it.

Part of the problem was that, unlike in 2014, the EPP had chosen someone very low profile (in what many now view as a major mistake, in the EPP primary Weber widely defeated former Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb, who just last week was elected to be Finland’s President). Macron made no secret of his lack of respect for Weber. But there was no official rule that the president had to be from the largest group, and Macron could have thrown his weight behind his own Renew Europe group’s candidate, EU Competition Commissioner Margrete Vestager. He didn’t. Nor did he support the candidacy of PES Candidate Frans Timmermans (despite him getting, incredibly, the support of EPP’s Angela Merkel). It became clear that having run a campaign for the job of Commission President in 2019 was actually going to be disqualifying to get the job. Macron would not support any spitzenkandidat lest it cement the process into place.

Meanwhile, the Parliament went into threat mode. MEPs resolved that they would not confirm anyone the Council appointed unless they were one of the six spitzenkandidats (something Weber, as leader of the parliament’s largest political group, was instrumental in making happen).

A weeks-long showdown ensued which felt very much at the time like an EU constitutional crisis. The impasse was eventually broken by Macron suggesting, out of the blue, the EPP’s von der Leyen. Merkel was reportedly not so enthusiastic about the idea, but the other EPP prime ministers liked it. She was appointed, and the Council decreed that Timmermans would have the title “Commission First Vice President” created for him to compensate the PES. Vestager was given the influential Competition Commissioner portfolio. But this all needed a majority vote of confirmation in the parliament.

MEPs were in a difficult spot. Many MEPs said they needed to stick to their resolution that they would only confirm a spitzenkandidat. But others worried that a refusal could plunge the EU into a period of leaderless chaos. EPP MEPs, even those that were close allies of Weber, thought it would be foolish to reject von der Leyen and risk the next appointment attempt being Timmermans or Vestager. Von der Leyen needed 374 votes to be confirmed. She received 383. A large proportion of those ‘no’ votes were not a no to von der Leyen, but a no to killing the spitzenkandidat process.

After the vote, von der Leyen acknowledged the bad feelings that the whole episode had created. She promised to pursue the Parliament’s push for a constitutional convention, which she did but as a watered-down “Conference on the Future of Europe” which was widely ignored because national governments didn’t engage with it.

The “fake” spitzenkandidat

Ursula von der Leyen did not herself kill the spitzenkandidat process. It would have been unreasonable to expect her, having been appointed by the Council, to turn it down to defend the legitimacy of what was only a developing and still widely unknown democratic process. The Council killed the spitzenkandidat, and the European Parliament acted as their accomplice when they abandoned the baby they had birthed, caved in and voted to confirm her. However you feel about the spitzenkandidat process (I supported it as a good starting point) the fact is that it has been dead for five years. Attempts to revive it now for the 2024 election are at best pathetic, and at worse deceitful.

Von der Leyen has been a very good Commission President for national governments. She is the best communicator Brussels has ever had, and she is without doubt now the most well-known Commission President among the public in history (largely thanks to the Brexit, Covid and Ukraine crises). She is likeable, friendly, clear and sober - all qualities her predecessor did not posses. Also unlike her predecessor, she has treated national governments with kid gloves. She’s let them get away with a notification loophole that allows them to shirk Schengen open-border rules. Her Commission has been among the least active enforcers of infringement procedures in EU history. There has been no effort to enforce economic governance rules. And she has treaded only lightly against Poland and Hungary, and only when forced to act by the Council. The perception is that she gets her instructions from Paris and Berlin (particularly the latter), and she carries them out. She says all the right things, going with whatever the most popular thing to do is in the moment. But is she acting in the European interest?

She will most likely be appointed for a second term in July, and MEPs know it. By presenting her now as a spitzenkandidat, pretending that there is again a presidential campaign being run, they can put a democratic fig leaf over a deeply undemocratic process. It isn’t just EPP MEPs pursuing this ill-advised course. Some Left and Liberal MEPs seem to be under the rather pathetic thinking that if they run a sort of pre-ordained “fake” campaign contest this time with von der Leyen as the pre-ordained winner, they can run a real spitzenkandidat process next time. The PES is choosing EU Labor Commissioner Nicolas Schmit to be their “lead candidate”, which is particularly laughable considering von der Leyen is his boss.

To go through this charade would be absurd. After what happened in 2019, how could anyone trust the spitzenkandidat process again? I as a journalist will certainly not waste my time covering such a “campaign” or attending a sham presidential debate. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Former candidate Martin Schulz went so far this week as to tell Politico “her so-called Spitzenkandidaten role is a fake role.” “One thing is true, she ran in 2019 - but not for the European Parliament, but she ran away from her ministry in Germany.”

Von der Leyen has said her line about “running in 2019” not once, but twice. First when she was put forward by her national party in Germany, and then in a press conference alongside Weber at the European Parliament here in Brussels on Wednesday. “I myself and we as EPP believe deeply in this idea of lead candidates, and presenting people before the elections,” Weber said. "It's crucial to give the people a voice in deciding about the future of Europe.”

But what voice, and for what role? The EPP hasn’t even been clear about what they mean by “lead candidate”, nor have the other groups. Are they presenting this as a repeat of the 2014 and 2019 spitzenkandidat process where these people are supposed to be the candidates for Commission President? Or are they simply the visible face at the top of the pan-European election lists for the European Parliament? If that’s the case then why isn’t von der Leyen running for a seat in the Parliament? Schmitt isn’t running to be an MEP either. Von der Leyen is only running for one thing: president. So does that mean this is what Schmitt and her other “lead candidate” rivals are running for also?

The whole thing is an embarrassment and a disservice to EU voters who will be given even less reason to believe in democratic accountability in the EU. These political groups should make clear now that these “lead candidates” are the face of the European Parliament campaigns only, and that von der Leyen’s wish for a second term is something entirely separate to that. If they don’t, then this will give the appearance of a sham process design to put a fake democratic cloak over a diktat. MEPs are playing with fire here.

The system of national leaders appointing the president isn’t great, but it’s not completely undemocratic either. The prime ministers appointing her also weren’t directly democratically elected, they were appointed by directly-elected MPs. The EU president’s appointment is many steps removed from the voter, but there is a link there. I support having more direct voting for the EU president, either through directly-elected representatives in the parliament or through a direct vote. But the only thing I can think of that would be worse than the Council appointment system we have now is a sham system where voters are lied to and told their vote will determine who the president is, when at best all it does is possibly influence where the appointment is on the political spectrum.