Ursula von der Leyen is elected European Commission president

By CHARLEMAGNE | STRASBOURG

“GEWÄHLT ist gewählt und Mehrheit ist Mehrheit,” goes a saying in German politics coined by Gerhard Schröder, the former chancellor: “elected is elected and a majority is a majority”. The term could become Ursula von der Leyen’s new mantra. On the evening of July 16th the German defence minister was elected the new president of the European Commission by the European Parliament. She won 383 of the 733 votes cast, clearing the margin for an absolute majority by just nine votes, and will thus become the first ever woman president of the EU’s executive when Jean-Claude Juncker steps down at the end of October.

It was a much narrower victory than many had expected. Mrs von der Leyen began the day with a competent and policy-rich speech aimed particularly at the centre and centre-left of the parliament, which is beginning its new term after the European election in May. She wooed liberals with talk of an artificial-intelligence strategy and the completion of the EU’s capital-markets union, socialists with a commitment to unemployment reinsurance and minimum wages, and greens with pledges of a Green Deal and more ambitious targets to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. There were other proposals appealing across the pro-European centre, for those who might have dismissed her as a dry, back-room politician: a right of legislative initiative for the European Parliament (that right rests in the commission), accelerated improvements on border controls, a shift away from unanimity requirements on foreign policy and a new mechanism for tackling rule-of-law infringements. The goal was clear: Mrs von der Leyen wanted to be elected with a broad “grand coalition” of the political mainstream. That should have been easy. Her own centre-right block, the liberals, the socialists and the greens together hold 518 of the parliament’s 751 seats.

But it was not. The centre-right EPP group and the liberals were, it is true, broadly supportive. Under a deal done by national leaders in a marathon European Council summit culminating on July 2nd, Mrs von der Leyen would be nominated for the commission, Charles Michel, a liberal, to the European Council’s own presidency and Josep Borrell, a socialist, to the role of high representative for foreign policy—with Christine Lagarde, the French head of the IMF, taking charge at the European Central Bank. But plenty of greens and socialists (led by contingents from Germany itself) objected that this was a stitch-up, that it was unfair on the left and that it contravened a post-2014 convention whereby a party-political “lead candidate” should win a mandate at the European election to become commission president. That raised the spectre of Mrs von der Leyen owing her majority to right-wing populists from outside the mainstream, some of whom backed her to avoid getting Frans Timmermans, the socialists’ preferred choice.

Clearly Mrs von der Leyen wanted to avoid that outcome. Her speech this morning was her last effort to do so. The vote was secret. But its narrowness suggests that without the votes of, say, Poland’s right-populist Law and Justice (PiS) MEPs or those of Hungary’s authoritarian Fidesz, she would not have won. One rumour, encouraged by sources in Warsaw, has it that Angela Merkel called PiS leaders to secure their support for her compatriot and ally (perhaps in exchange for German support to keep EU regional funds flowing to poor Polish regions). By contrast none of Germany’s 16 Social Democrat MEPs claims to have voted for her and almost no members of the parliament’s Green fraction did. So the incoming commission president will take office with her authority already dented. Far from commanding a centrist majority in the parliament, she faces charges of being in hock to some of the more unpleasant and unpredictable elements of the European right.

Still, much of the media hyperventilation that greeted the close result was unwarranted. The outcome is the product of many factors: divisions in the European Council, the failure of the “lead candidate” doctrine to catch on, the parliament’s inability to unite around an alternative candidate, some MEPs’ resentment of national leaders for imposing their choice, the identity crisis on the European centre-left and the insincere strategic feints of populist rightists. Law and Justice, like Fidesz, had and has no good reason to think that Mrs von der Leyen is particularly sympathetic to their world-view—indeed it was they she seemed to have in the sights of her proposed rule-of-law mechanism. But it did want to be seen to back the “winning” candidate, which is doubtless why it is gleefully spreading word of Mrs Merkel’s supposed phone call. Plenty want to be seen as queenmakers, but the reality is messier.

A majority is a majority. And whatever the size of her majority, Mrs von der Leyen would have faced a difficult legislative picture both in the parliament and in the European Council, irrespective of the margin of her vote. Both are more fragmented and fractious than before. Even had her charm offensive been more successful and more deals been struck, and had she won a thumping victory of 430 votes, say, that would merely have masked the fractures. Such a coalition would have spanned such a broad range of views, from greens to right-wing nationalists, that its size would have belied the legislative strains to come, just as it would have under a different candidate for the commission presidency. An illustration of the deceptiveness of the headline number comes in the responses to Mrs von der Leyen’s election: the incoming commission president has been showered with warm words and congratulations from greens, who did not vote for her, but criticised for her left-leaning speech by PiS figures, who did. The centre is splintering, politics is more plural and power battles are raging; in such a Europe down is sometimes up, and up is sometimes down.

The urgent question now, then, is the same one that would have arisen had her majority been much larger: can Mrs von der Leyen build bridges? The commission proposes EU legislation, which in most areas is passed by the European Council and the parliament. The two are more internally split than before and more antagonistic towards one another. Crafting measures that respond to the myriad demands of a turbulent world and can appeal across these fractures will take a knack for diplomacy, deal-making and persuasion. Mrs von der Leyen, a multilingual moderate, showed today that she has at least some talent for this—although the many German critics of her troubled spell as defence minister beg to differ. Her first test will be putting together a commission and insisting on candidates (nominated by national governments) that make a capable overall team and fulfil her commitment to a gender balance. Elected is elected. Now Mrs von der Leyen must lead.