Ursula von der Leyen: beyond redemption
Ursula von der Leyen: beyond redemption
George M. Georgiou
To be accused of impropriety on one occasion may be
regarded as a misfortune but to be accused on four occasions looks like
carelessness. (With apologies to Oscar Wilde)
If there is one individual who, more than anyone else,
symbolises the ineptitude of the European Commission then it is surely the
Commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen (hereafter, VDL).
Questions about
VDL’s lack of probity first surfaced in 2015 when she was accused of
plagiarising her doctoral dissertation. She was eventually cleared of the
accusations but as the BBC reported on 9 March 2016, the president of the
Hannover Medical School, Christopher Baum, conceded that “Ms von der Leyen's thesis did contain
plagiarised material”, but he added
“there had been no intent to deceive”. Her
first lucky escape.
VDL’s lack of
probity continued while she served as Germany’s Minister of Defence between 2013 and 2019. During her tenure
at the ministry, she became embroiled in a scandal regarding payments of €250
million to consultants related to arms contracts. Germany’s Federal Audit
Office found that, of the €250 million declared for consultancy fees, only €5.1
million had been spent. Furthermore, one of the consultants was McKinsey &
Company, where VDL’s son was an associate, thus raising a possible conflict of
interest. It also emerged that messages
related to the contracts had been deleted from two of VDL’s mobile phones.
Although she was eventually cleared of corruption allegations, questions over
her probity during that period remain to this day.
Having survived two scandals, VDL couldn’t believe her
luck when in July 2019 Macron, together
with Merkel, bypassed the Spitzenkadidaten
process and nominated her as Jean-Claude Junker’s successor as head of the
European Commission. The Spitzenkadidaten
process, through which the lead candidate emerges and is then ratified by
the European Parliament, is itself somewhat arcane. In VDL’s case, she was
fortunate that the EU couldn’t agree on either of the two lead candidates at
the time, Martin Weber and Frans Timmermans. It was thus left to the consummate
fixer, Macron, and VDL’s mentor, Merkel, to come to an agreement using that
great democratic and transparent tool called the ‘backroom deal’. VDL’s
nomination was accepted by the European Council and on 16 July the European
Parliament voted to accept her appointment. But it was a close vote. Out of a
total of 747 MEPs, only 383 voted for her, 327 voted against, 22 abstained, and
one vote was invalid. Under the EU rules, the president of the Commission must
be elected with more than 50% of the MEP votes. Thus, she received only 9 votes
more than the threshold. Compare this to her predecessor, Juncker, who in 2014
received 422 votes.
After she was appointed president of the European
Commission, VDL again became embroiled in controversy, this time involving the
procurement of the Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer. The scandal, which the media
dubbed Pfizergate, related to the purchase of 1.8 billion doses of the Pfizer
vaccine for use across the EU. It transpired that: a) the number of doses was
far greater than was required, resulting in a significant number having to be
either destroyed or donated; b) the excess doses cost the EU €4 billion; c) the
total value of the contract, which Politico
reported as being approximately €20 billion, was inflated; and d) the most
damaging charge, the contract for the vaccines was negotiated directly between
VDL and Albert Broula, the CEO of Pfizer. The negotiations were conducted using
sms messages, which VDL later claimed to have deleted.
The
New York Times, which initially carried out the
investigation into Pfizergate, brought a lawsuit against the European
Commission for failing to provide access to the sms conversations between VDL
and Broula. In Belgium, a lobbyist, Frederic Baldan, filed a criminal complaint
citing corruption and the destruction of documents. The Belgian lawsuit was
eventually taken over by the European Public Prosecutors Office, which opened a
criminal investigation. The outcome of these legal proceedings/investigations
is still pending.
One would have thought that the imprudent VDL would
have learned a lesson from all these transgressions but it seems that nothing
will stand in the way of Ursula and a good scandal. Which brings us to her
latest impropriety, cronyism. In January of this year, VDL had appointed fellow
CDU politician, Martin Pieper, to a newly created and lucrative post of special
envoy for SMEs. The appointment was reported by La Matinale Europeenne in February but it wasn’t until April that
the controversy surrounding the appointment received wide coverage in the
English language media.
The appointment was controversial for two reasons: 1)
the recruitment process was flawed and 2) the choice of Pieper was seen as
politically motivated. On the first issue, it was revealed by an anonymous EU
official that
there had been two other candidates, one from Sweden
and one from the Czech Republic, who had scored better than Pieper in the
recruitment process.
On the second issue, there was strong suspicion that
Pieper had been chosen by VDL in order to curry favour with the CDU and thus
win their backing for her reappointment as head of the European Commission. The
appointment sparked a strong response both from other members of the Commission
and from MEPs. Four senior Commissioners, including Joseph Borrell and the
Internal Market Commissioner, Thiery Breton, wrote to VDL on 27 March
expressing their concern about the appointment’s lack of transparency and impartiality.
On 11 April, MEPs voted by 382 to 144 to rescind Pieper’s appointment. Although
the vote was not binding on the Commission, Pieper’s position became untenable
and on 16 April he resigned. In the
words of Daniel Freund, a German /Greens
MEP, reported on Euronews, it was
“sad and shameful”. He added: “I don’t know how we can explain it to the
voters”.
It’s not clear when the vote for the European
Commission presidency will take place. Some media reports have mentioned the
last week of June others have indicated it will be mid-July. The exact date is
a trivial matter. What is not trivial is that VDL seems, at the moment, to be
the front runner for the job, despite all the improprieties mentioned above.
Her reappointment for another 5 years would confirm what many have been
advocating for some time, that the EU needs radical reform. But even if she is not
reelected, the imperative for reform will remain strong and urgent. EU citizens
need to see that EU institutions are far more transparent, accountable and
democratic.
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