Where Ursula von der Leyen once again surprised everyone on Tuesday, nine votes initially made the difference. 383 MPs voted for the Commission President when she stood for election in the Strasbourg EU Parliament in November 2019, a wafer-thin majority supported by the Christian Democratic EPP, the European Social Democrats and the liberal parliamentarians of the Renew group. At that time she rode a green wave into the Commission building at the Schuman roundabout in Brussels. “Fridays for Future” demonstrated on the streets, Bavaria’s Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) hugged trees, and officials in the Commission wrote about the Green Deal, the EU climate protection program that was to become von der Leyen’s brand core.
Other times. On Tuesday in Strasbourg it became clearer than ever since she took office how the changing zeitgeist has gripped politics and communication in the Brussels control center. How von der Leyen reacts to internal and external constraints and everything that is said and written now is in the spirit of the upcoming election campaign. Today, tractors are blocking the streets, right-wing parties and conservative forces are stirring up sentiment against everything green, and von der Leyen has to win back her party family, which had recently become estranged from her. If she wants to continue her work for another five years, which she will probably confirm soon, the coming months will be a walk on a fine line.
Clear signals to the tractor demonstrators
She has already taken the first steps. On Tuesday, she publicly threw the planned law to reduce the use of pesticides into the trash. It would have required farmers to spray significantly less pesticide on their fields and was a central part of the Green Deal. In November it failed in parliament. The fact that the Commission is completely withdrawing the proposal, as von der Leyen announced on Tuesday, still surprised many. Something like this rarely happens. And it is one of many clear signals to the tractor demonstrators.
“It is clear to all of us that our agricultural and food sector – starting with farms – needs long-term perspectives,” said von der Leyen in her speech on Tuesday morning. We have to listen to each other and look for common solutions. And: “We have to avoid assigning blame.” This is the sound of a Commission President who has demanded a lot from her party in order to support her in her pursuit of a second term in office. And who now wants to catch up on something. Because despite all the green legislation, which sets out detailed climate and environmental protection requirements in individual sectors, there has been too little discussion with those who are directly affected by it, as people around them say.
Hence the “strategic dialogues” with representatives from agriculture and industry. And language that conspicuously emphasizes that climate protection must be socially acceptable, that the agricultural and industrial sectors must be “agile and strong” in a “globally competitive and increasingly sustainable economy.”
Greens and Social Democrats expressed disappointment
Such sentences can be read in the EU climate plans for 2040, which were also presented on Tuesday. According to this, greenhouse gas emissions should fall by 90 percent overall compared to 1990. The communiqué, accompanying materials and the impact assessment, which is more than 600 pages long, are doubly remarkable. Firstly, because in terms of content they anticipate a framework for the EU’s economic and industrial policy in the coming years. And secondly, because they show that von der Leyen wants to please everyone as much as possible before the upcoming election campaign.
For example, the EPP, which would have been quite happy if the Commission had not issued a 2040 target at all before the election. The heads of state and government who want a break from regulation. And the farmers who can no longer find a specific emissions target for the agricultural sector in the documents because that would not necessarily have improved the mood in the discussions with the EU leaders.
On the other side are the Greens and the Social Democrats, the environmentalists and those parts of the Commission for whom previous climate protection efforts do not go far enough. The climate target now presented is seen by many as the lower limit of “what science has identified as the EU’s necessary and possible contribution to the fight against the climate crisis,” is how Delara Burkhardt, the environmental policy spokeswoman for the SPD in the EU Parliament, puts it.
The Commission no longer has to take its former Vice President Frans Timmermans into account. The Social Democrat from the Netherlands, who lost the election against EPP leader Manfred Weber as the top candidate in the last European elections and was responsible for the Green Deal, withdrew from the Commission before the Dutch parliamentary elections in the summer in order to return to national politics. Today he is portrayed as a know-it-all who didn’t listen to the sounds of the street enough when writing the laws. He has filled the Commission’s Climate Directorate-General with “many, many people” “who are working on instruments to torture Europeans, European farmers, European industry and so on,” said Peter Liese, the EPP’s environmental policy spokesman.
Since the EPP is likely to win the elections, everything suggests that von der Leyen will be back in the Strasbourg parliament next November and is hoping for the necessary number of votes. She has to convince more than half of the 720 MPs. With the right in the foreseeable future becoming stronger and the liberals weaker, this could again be very close. But von der Leyen has proven in recent years that she can balance politics well.