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The Queen of Brussels? Photo by Horacio Villalobos Corbis via Getty Images.
As Ursula von der Leyen begins her second term as President of the European Commission, she does so as a colossus, enjoying sweeping authority over the European Union and its 450 million inhabitants. The Empress rules a bloc that’s undemocratic by design, and which puts immense authority in the hands of its rulers. And as seems clear, she intends to extend her technocratic revolution, transforming the EU from a collection of member-states into a single state.
With Macron floundering, and Scholz despised, von der Leyen’s continued tenure breaks with a global pattern of incumbency failure. Unlike mere politicians, though, von der Leyen doesn’t need to worry about what the voters think. To be sure, the President of the EU Commission must secure the support of the EU Parliament, but only after having been nominated by the government of each member state. In theory, that should reflect the outcome of European elections. In practice, however, the EU Parliament is a castrated legislature, constitutionally incapable of initiating law.
Von der Leyen is less the executive of an open democracy and more the chief officer of a Soviet politburo. That’s clear, certainly, if you glance at the titles of the President’s commissars. From the executive vice president for clean, just and competition transition, to the executive vice president for cohesion and reforms, her underlings preside over departments that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Seventies Moscow. And during her first term in office, from 2019 to 2024, she relentlessly consolidated authority, slowly tilting the EU’s balance of power towards supranational institutions like the Commission — and away from the Council of Ministers representing member states.
This state-building project looks set to ramp up during her second term; as she makes clear in her political guidelines for the next commission, her vision is infused with existential discourse, insisting that Europe has no future unless it continues to grind its way towards unity. With von der Leyen’s determination to pursue the proxy war in Ukraine at the expense of European economic wellbeing, and her reliance on Baltic politicians such as Kaja Kallas as High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security, she seems to be following the historic pattern of state-making through crisis.
Yet if Ursula is a modern Charlemagne in her vanity and ambition, the fact that her efforts are so remote from the popular will means they’ll inevitably founder. Though centralisation at the top will doubtless enhance her personal sway, that means little without bolstering the wider EU system. In fact, concentrating power in this non-sovereign model is likely to make it even more lopsided, with a top-heavy superstructure perched over a continent seething with popular discontent. No matter how many Russophobes von der Leyen stuffs into her bureaucracy, after all, the Ukraine war will ultimately be decided not in Brussels but Washington, when Donald Trump shortly re-enters the White House in January.
Thus the paradox of von der Leyen’s second term is that as the power of the EU centre grows, Europe itself becomes weaker. Nothing that von der Leyen does seems likely to reverse this decline. In fact, her plan to completely end the flow of Russian gas into Europe, in favour of expensive liquified natural gas from the US, speaks to her congenital inability to act in her continent’s best interests. That, in turn, reflects the fact that the EU is not a nation-state, and by design can’t have a national self-interest. While von der Leyen has therefore been promising to slash the regulation that supposedly stifles European business — plenty of which were brought in under her last term — the fact is that industry from Rioja to the Ruhr will continue to suffer without cheap energy.
How will this historic decline be disguised? This takes us to the second of von der Leyen’s transformations: appointing Raffaele Fitto, a minister from the Brothers of Italy party, as her executive vice president for cohesion and reforms. In so doing, von der Leyen has broken the liberal cordon sanitaire whereby the continent’s technocratic establishment sought to contain the electoral insurgencies of EU populists. Fitto’s new job has cost von der Leyen the support of certain natural allies, notably the Socialists and Democrats grouping in the EU Parliament. Yet Empress Ursula is cunning enough to realise that by appearing to be responsive to public demands, and drawing in electorally successful populists, she can easily recoup any losses sustained among squabbling centrists.
The nominal basis for this new political friendship is, of course, a shared commitment to pursuing the proxy war in Eastern Europe. Yet the basis for the Fitto alliance runs deeper than Ukraine. Rather, the alliance indicates that the continent’s hard-Right national populists are being carefully, and willingly, drawn into the court of the imperial centre. The reason? To help re-legitimise von der Leyen’s faltering clique of technocrats.
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SubscribeWhat I genuinely can’t understand is why people would still like to be part of this EU mess. They are carrying on becoming more and more self-destructive and people want to join them.
The only real argument was the aggregate affect on GDP but as we all know now we have left, that is just code speak for even more immigration.
Because it aligns with the greater overall shift to managerial capitalism (and its evolution, stakeholders capitalism), where managers and other bureaucrats (Galbraith called them technostructure) have more power and control than the shareholders/voters.
The technostructure survives by creating complex organisations that require a huge bureaucracy to run them, this results in the creation of supersized entities (multinationals or international organisations), which then have the power and money to imprint the necessity of their existence to the public as the only sensible option.
EU also brainwashed people for 30 years with ads and funding to the media (most of which wouldn’t survive without funding from packages such as the European Regional Development Fund).
Thanks for that and I understand what you say. Presumably, IF Labour got a second term they would stir up unrest with the help of the BBC and try to make ordinary people believe that the only solution to all of our problems was to rejoin the EU? This is very much like the NetZero2030 information from the BBC which says that we have to stop living before we fry ourselves to death.
After eight long years I’ve still yet to encounter a remainer who has bothered to learn anything at all about the EU, its history, institutions and workings. Our ancestors who struggled for centuries to bring accountability to government must be looking on in despair at their fecklessness.
The EU has long been an anti-nation state globalist enterprise following the diktats of supranational entities first and foremost.
This era has been one of the most destructive we have ever known, although its consequences are really only just beginning to meaningfully break through the glossy veneer many have been dazzled by.
“ her congenital inability to act in her continent’s best interests” puts her in line with several current national leaders from Trudeau to Starmer not to mention those of the recent past such as Blair, Johnson, May and Merkel etc.
Some days I fear that yet another aspect of Orwellian prophecy is coalescing in real time, the superstates of Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia that were at constant war.
Apologies for pessimism but how anyone finds reason to trust anymore is beyond me.
“In many ways, then, Fitto represents a natural alliance, proving the point that both technocrats and populists ultimately despise national representative institutions.”
Er, no. It seems to me that Fitto’s job is an example of “keep close to your friends, and even closer to your enemies”. Which is what he will do.
Interesting. The deep state in American and the EU rulers, all greedy and inept bureaucrats will be fighting to survive over the next 4 years. Let’s hope they do not, for the sake of the west. it is starting to unravel quickly in the states as more folks are starting to wake up and pay attention to the abuses, lying, and incompetence (except for lining their pockets) of the Senior Bureaucrats of the Federal government, I imagine that this could and should be duplicated in the EU as well as in England. Let’s hope so.
Technocrats are technocrats regardless and homogenised.
Populists are by their nature anti-technocrat by default and plural.
This is a match which will only succeed if her favoured populists dance to her tune.
It is a marriage of convenience that will dissolve as soon as immigration is surfaced as an issue. Demographics as destiny will destroy the Europe that we love.