With 3 years left in her term, the Commission boss must revive Europe’s industry, defend its rules, bolster security, support Ukraine, expand the bloc — and pay for it all. Illustration by Eva Redamonti for POLITICO Ursula von der Leyen has three years left to cement her legacy, but it’ll be far from easy. Von der Leyen’s second term ends in 2029, by which time she’ll have been at the helm of the European Commission for a decade.
If, as Brussels Playbook reported earlier this summer, the EU executive chief won’t seek a third term, then she’s in the final stretch of her career in Brussels. Her time in office has been dominated by crisis management — Covid-19, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, sky-high energy prices, war in Gaza. In the years to come, the challenges will likely keep mounting, including competition from China and the United States, and upcoming elections in France, Spain, Italy and Poland that could reshape the EU.
In the Commission’s Berlaymont HQ, von der Leyen and her team are feverishly working on her State of the EU speech, to be delivered on Sept. 16. It’s when she will set out her plan for the years to come. After that, she’ll have to deliver.
But it’s the actions that create legacy,” said Martin Hojsík, a vice president of the European Parliament from the Renew Europe group. For me, the real question is not how her legacy is presented, but what concrete results Europeans will see by the end of this mandate.” Here are six potential headaches likely to define von der Leyen’s remaining time in office. Will von der Leyen be able to stem the Continent’s economic decline … or oversee the death of its industrial heartlands?
It was von der Leyen who asked former Italian PM and European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi to draw up a report into the continent’s competitiveness. He was brutal in his assessment, saying that “without action, we will have to either compromise our welfare, our environment or our freedom.” He called on Europe to invest an additional €800 billion a year to drag itself out of a trough of low productivity and feeble growth that’s pushing it behind the U.S. and China in the international pecking order. Von der Leyen promised to turn Draghi’s warning into an industrial strategy, but the headwinds are strong.
European companies face high energy prices, fragmented capital markets, complex regulation and intensifying competition from abroad. And while European companies need Chinese markets and supply chains, that dependency comes at a high cost. State subsidies have allowed Chinese firms to build capacity that far exceeds domestic demand, and their EVs, batteries, solar panels and steel are putting pressure on EU rivals.
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