Abstract
This chapter aims to situate the von der Leyen Commission historically and comparatively. As well as providing a provisional performance of the administration at mid-term, it assesses what the appointment and achivements of Ursula von der Leyen as a non-Spitzenkandidat demonstrates about the institutionalisation of presidentialised and personalised leadership of the Commission.
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Notes
- 1.
Indeed, she is one of only three women to lead a major EU institution. Simone Veil, who served as President of the European Parliament between 1979 and 1982, was the first. The other is Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank, appointed the same year as von der Leyen.
- 2.
The full provision reads as follows: ‘Taking into account the elections to the European Parliament and after having held the appropriate consultations, the European Council, acting by a qualified majority, shall propose to the European Parliament a candidate for President of the Commission. This candidate shall be elected by the European Parliament by a majority of its component members. If he does not obtain the required majority, the European Council, acting by a qualified majority, shall within one month propose a new candidate who shall be elected by the European Parliament following the same procedure’.
- 3.
They were: European People’s Party—Manfred Weber, Party of European Socialists—Frans Timmermans; European Conservatives and Reformists—Jan Zahradil; Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe—“Team Europe”, seven candidates for the top EU posts, including Margrethe Vestager; European Green Party—Ska Keller/Bas Eickhout; Party of the European Left—Violeta Tomič/Nico Cué.
- 4.
This style was also reported by three senior Commission officials interviewed by the authors as part of the research for this chapter.
- 5.
Due to space constraints, references are not provided for individual policy initiatives. For further information, see the Commission website, https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024_en and the European Parliament’s Legislative train schedule, https://www.europarl.europa.eu/legislative-train/summary/06-2021.
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Acknowledgements
I should like to thank participants of workshops convened by the College of Europe on 26 January 2021 and the Europal network on 29 April 2021 for helpful comments on an earlier draft. I have benefitted from innumerable conversations on themes covered in this chapter with Sara Connolly, Michael W. Bauer, Pierre Bocquillon, Brigid Laffan, Didier Georgakakis, Dionyssis G. Dimitrakopoulos, Sandrino Smeets, Frédéric Merand and Martin Westlake. My greatest debt is to officials in the European Commission and the Council Secretariat, who very kindly agreed to answer questions on the topic of this paper on a strictly non-attributable basis, and the staff in both who participated in four major research projects. The usual disclaimer applies.
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Kassim, H. (2023). The von der Leyen Commission: An Early Assessment. In: Costa, O., Van Hecke, S. (eds) The EU Political System After the 2019 European Elections. Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12338-2_9
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