Index – Abroad – Confusion in Brussels: Emmanuel Macron can turn European politics upside down

We already wrote a few days ago that Ursula von der Leyen’s reshuffle is far from certain, as several people are applying to lead the European Commission.

The French have already received ambiguous statements regarding whether they would support the re-election of the German politician. The head of Emmanuel Macron’s European party family, Renew Europe, Valérie Hayer, for example, said she may or may not vote for him.

Now, however, it seems that Macron has already started looking for an alternative. According to Bloomberg

The news agency – whose anonymous sources spoke about Emmanuel Macron’s discussions – specifically named Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni among these heads of government. As it was written, Macron’s goal would be to place a technocratic leader at the head of the European Commission, and one of his candidates would be none other than Mario Draghi, the former Italian president of the European Central Bank (ECB) he was also cast as its new president by the foreign press, although he allegedly said at the time that he did not want to hold any leading position in the EU).

After the 2019 Macron-Merkel pact – thanks to which she became president of the EC – Ursula von der Leyen vowed to transform the institution into a “geopolitical commission”. However, according to one of the officials speaking to Bloomberg, the President of the European Court of Justice may have harmed his own chances by politicizing his role too much: his actions in the last five years have earned the displeasure of several EU member states,

Recently, Emmanuel Macron has not hidden his dissatisfaction with him. “The committee presidency is there to protect general interests, so it should not be politicized too much. Which, it must be said, was not at all typical of this outgoing committee,” said the French president a few weeks ago in Brussels.

A spokesperson for Macron’s office declined to comment to Bloomberg in this regard, and a representative of the Italian government denied that Giorgia Meloni had discussed Draghi’s role with the French president. The news agency noted: according to their sources, it is questionable whether Macron really wants to replace Ursula von der Leyen, or whether he is only putting pressure on her in order to extract certain concessions from her.

Ursula von der Leyen is the favorite, but she will not have an easy task

Bloomberg also added that regardless of Macron’s “maneuvering”, Ursula von der Leyen remains the clear favorite as the candidate of the European People’s Party (and Germany, which is considered a major EU power). At the same time, his situation is made more difficult by the fact that he has to work on the campaign and the day-to-day matters of the committee at the same time (for example, the Chief of Staff of the EC President, Björn Seibert, no longer coordinates the affairs of the institution at all, according to the news agency, but is working full force on the re-election campaign).

The leaders of the EU member states are expected to meet after the EP elections, on June 17, to discuss the new leadership in Brussels, after which the European Parliament must give an absolute majority to the EC president. Von der Leyen was elected president again in 2019 with just nine votes after a long negotiation process – and since then (according to public opinion polls) the hard-line factions of the right have strengthened, so now he may have an even more difficult task.

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