Who Is the Woman at the Top of the Union? Ursula von der Leyen-A Portrait
By Paula Nörr, 8 minutes.
Who is the woman at the top of the Union? Originally a trained physician, Ursula von der Leyen became the President of the European Commission in 2019. The former German Minister of Defence only started her political career in her early forties but gathered a steep political career since then. In her position as Minister of Family Affairs as well as in her position as Minister of Defence she was known as a progressive, multifaceted but also controversial political figure. This article discovers the different facets of the most powerful woman within the EU institutions.
Source: European Parliament
On 3 July 2019, the German Defence Minister at that time, Ursula von der Leyen, was proposed as Commission President candidate to the European Parliament by the European Council following several days of negotiations between the Heads of State or Government. After presenting her Political Guidelines, the 60-year old former gynaecologist was elected by the European Parliament with 383 votes, while 327 members voted against her, and 22 members abstained. Ursula von der Leyen becoming the next Commission President following Jean-Claude Juncker was a surprise in many ways. It was not only surprising that for the first time in 50 years a German candidate was back in the race for the presidency; or that Germany itself abstained due to disagreement within the government coalition. By selecting von der Leyen as a candidate, the national leaders also deviated from the ‘Spitzenkandidaten’ procedure, in which the Council is expected to choose from lead candidates of major political parties for the role of the Commission President according to the European election results. Furthermore, the national leaders broke the tradition to nominate a former Head of State or Government as a candidate for the Commission President. Finally, Ursula von der Leyen is also the first woman in history who takes the lead of the Commission. In her role as President, she organizes the Commission, allocates portfolios to individual Commissioners, and sets the Commission’s policy agenda. Moreover, she represents the Commission in European Council meetings, in debates with the European Parliament and the Council, as well as externally when she attends G7 and G20 or other summits with non-EU countries.
“If elected I will strengthen the links between people, nations and institutions.”
– Ursula von der Leyen, 2019
Source: European Commission
Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen, née Albrecht, was born on 8 October 1958 in Brussels and is the daughter of Ernst Albrecht, a former State Minister of the German Land of Lower Saxony. At the time of the European Economic Community, her father was a European Commissioner and from 1964 to 1971, Ursula von der Leyen also attended European school in Brussels. As a result, she grew up close to politics and the European institutions, which is also the reason why she is often called to have the political and European blue blood. Von der Leyen started to study economics in Germany but later decided to continue her studies in London. Since far-left extremists targeted political and business figures and their families, at the time she lived there under the pseudonym ‘Rose Ladson’. Before, she spent her teenage years in Germany under police protection. In 1978, she graduated from the London School of Economics and began to study medicine in Hanover, later she earned a Masters’ degree in Public Health and in 1991 she received a PhD in Medicine. Since 1986, Ursula von der Leyen has been married to the German medical doctor and professor Heiko E. von der Leyen with whom she has seven children. As her husband took a job at Stanford University, she lived a few years with her family in California. Ursula von der Leyen has thus lived in Belgium, Germany, the United Kingdom as well as in the United States. As a result, she does not only hold a network of contacts in Europe and across the Atlantic but she also speaks fluent German, French, and English.
“We should not be shy about being proud of where we are or ambitious about where we want to go”
– Ursula von der Leyen, 2019
In 1990, von der Leyen joined the German Christian Democratic Union party (CDU) at the age of 32, the starting point of her political career. From 2005 to 2019, von der Leyen was a member of Angela Merkel’s cabinet, which makes her the cabinet member with the longest tenure. During her time as Minister of Family Affairs, she fought for maternity and paternity benefits to increase Germany’s birth rate and raised a debate about the German family model across the Christian Democratic party lines. For von der Leyen the basic problem was that most Germans still believed that it was impossible to combine children with a professional career. Therefore, she intended to improve women’s rights by fighting for a women’s quota in corporate boardrooms for instance and thereby becoming an outlier in her own party, the conservative and male-dominated CDU. After running the Ministries of Family Affairs and Labour she became the first German female Defence Minister in 2013, a political position that is known to be an inherently tough post. Over the years, von der Leyen became a political ally of Angela Merkel and for a long time, she was considered as a likely successor to Merkel. However, as Defence Minister, von der Leyen had to deal with several scandals and increasing criticism from her own party but also from the Social democratic party as well as from opposition parties. Amongst others, she was accused of mismanagement and misspending at the Defence Ministry. Criticising her work as Defence Minister, Martin Schulz, the former Leader of the Social Democratic Party and President of the European Parliament, called von der Leyen “the government’s weakest minister” in 2019. In the meantime, von der Leyen eventually distanced herself politically from Angela Merkel. Even though her political reputation seriously suffered during her time as Defence Minister, she made it in one of the highest political positions in the EU after the French President, Emmanuel Macron suggested her as a candidate for the Commission Presidency. Her reputation at home was much worse than abroad, where she was considered as a multifaceted and pro-European authority that remains calm in times of crisis and is capable of overcoming them.
“A truly multifaceted ‘Powerfrau’”
– Christine Lagarde, 2020
Source: European Commission
In her agenda for Europe ‘A Union that strives for more’, von der Leyen formulated six ambitions for the future of Europe which now serve the Commission and other European institutions as guidelines in the legislative period from 2019-2024. Read about them in this blue&yellow article.
A European Green Deal
A Europe fit for the digital age
An economy that works for the people
A stronger Europe in the world
Promoting our European way of life
A new push for European democracy
“I see the next five years as an opportunity for Europe – to strive for more at home in order to lead the world.”
-Ursula von der Leyen, 2019
The most striking feature about the Ursula von der Leyen’s Commission is the comparingly high number of female members with Ursula von der Leyen being the first woman in the EU’s top job. As President of the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, she deals with legislation that is affecting more than 700 million Europeans. Furthermore, she negotiates with powerful and often harsh political leaders like Donald Trump or Recep Tayyip Erdogan on political and economic issues. Being the first woman in this influential position proves to be challenging. During the meeting with President Erdogan and EU Council Charles Michel, for instance, there was no chair left for von der Leyen. Instead, she had to sit separately from the two male political leaders on a sofa on the side. Nevertheless, she professionally set the disrespectful situation aside and expressed concerns about Turkey’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention. Ironically, an international accord designed to protect women and their rights. In the aftermath, von der Leyen did not blame either of the negotiation partners for the incident, but she publicly acknowledged she felt “hurt and left alone”, as “a woman and as a European”.
“This goes to the core of who we are. This goes to the values our Union stands for. And this shows how far we still have to go before women are treated as equals.”
-Ursula von der Leyen, 2021
Despite all political failure and criticism, I believe that our current Commission President has one important strength that distinguishes her from her predecessors; she dares to speak up against entrenched structures. In her first State of the Union Address as Commissioner, for instance, she spoke out against anti-LGBTQ policies in Poland. Her innovative strength also became visible in pushing the European Green Deal through, which aims at making Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. In addition, she possesses the ability to stay calm and carry on, which helped her in the COVID-19 crisis when she reached approval for the historic €750 billion recovery fund that was endorsed only two months after its proposal. After a tough year, she won the World Leader Prize from the International advocacy group Global Citizen for being at the “forefront of creating change in response to COVID-19” and advocating “internationalism” regarding the funding of vaccines and her responsible leadership in these times. Overall, von der Leyen seems to be an innovative and strong leader with head and heart, who is not only capable of overcoming crises but aims to make real change and strives to bring the people of Europe a liveable future.
