The Brief - Merz in the driving seat in von der Leyen’s campaign

Merz in the driving seat in von der Leyen’s campaign

By Oliver Noyan

In her first term as Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen was largely free to push through her agenda without having to worry about backlash from her party. If she gets a second mandate, however, this is bound to change, with her conservative CDU party taking a much more prominent role.

When von der Leyen – then a relatively unknown German defence minister – was nominated as Commission president by EU leaders in 2019, it wasn’t her strong standing in the CDU that guaranteed her Europe’s top job. It was the political considerations of the member states, especially France, that gave her the much-needed buoyancy.

Up until that point, she wasn’t even on the radar of the European People’s Party (EPP) that the CDU belongs to.

While von der Leyen was one of Angela Merkel’s closest confidants, having been part of her cabinet for 14 years, she had little political clout within her party, with many saying she was already past the peak of her political career.

Her power base wasn’t her standing within the CDU – it was the weird nexus of EU countries’ different interests that landed her the Commission job. Von der Leyen was thus able to act relatively free of her party constraints and move more briskly than many of her peers.

This time around, things seem to be very different.

As von der Leyen is now running as the official lead candidate of the EPP and her German subsidiary, the CDU, she will have to rely on the support of her party and adapt to the increasingly conservative party line.

She already had to drop many of her pet projects to be more in line with the CDU, with the flagship Green Deal project being the most prominent collateral damage.

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For more policy news, check out this week’s Green Brief and the Health Brief.

Views are the author’s

[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]