She is the recently re-elected president of the European Commission and a former German defence minister, a name known to many, but who is Ursula von der Leyen?
Even when we think we know politicians, we are generally under the spell of their admirers or their detractors. There is really no way of knowing much about them. We assume, however, that they themselves know who they are.
Von der Leyen, 65, is a familiar face, but in the wake of Europe’s dramatic lurch to the right in the recent parliamentary elections, she would be forgiven for having lost a sense of self.
She has been busy. As The Guardian reported on 3 June, as part of her campaign, she has “inspected a drone factory in Latvia, laid flowers at a monument to the late Pope John Paul II in Poland and posed with a shaggy dog in Luxembourg”.
From Copenhagen to Split, Maastricht to Plovdiv, she has given speeches, shaken hands, signed T-shirts, posed for selfies, and released a video of her striding purposefully down a lane near her countryside home to dramatic orchestral music.
Her itinerary rivalled any of the party leaders in her beloved Britain during their own recent election, and yet none of the people she charms along the way could vote for von der Leyen any more than the Brits could, even if they wanted to.
Her fate has been in the hands of the continent’s political leaders, firstly. Analysts said Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s first female prime minister and leader of a party known as the ‘Brothers of Italy’, together with the Prime Minister of Czechia, Petr Fiala, could be the ones to swing it.
Meeting Meloni
Lazy analysts may have dismissed Meloni as a token gesture politician, but she is proving critics wrong. She is very much her own woman enjoying her moment, with a claim to being one of the most influential politicians on the continent.
She represents the rightward trend in European politics, has become pivotal in shaping the EU’s agenda on migration and climate, and has a knack with problem people, as demonstrated by her management of Hungary’s Victor Orbán.
