In the Commission’s Berlaymont HQ, von der Leyen and her team are feverishly working on her State of the EU speech, to be delivered on Sept. 16. It’s when she will set out her plan for the years to come. After that, she’ll have to deliver.
“Speeches are important. But it’s the actions that create legacy,” said Martin Hojsík, a vice president of the European Parliament from the Renew Europe group.
“Europe has become more vulnerable economically, competitiveness remains a major challenge, social and regional inequalities persist, and too often her Commission has reacted to crises rather than anticipated them,” said Victor Negrescu, a Parliament vice president from the Socialists and Democrats group. “I expect her to use this moment to defend her record, but also to explain how Europe can deliver more on growth, investment, social cohesion and strategic autonomy. For me, the real question is not how her legacy is presented, but what concrete results Europeans will see by the end of this mandate.”
Here are six potential headaches likely to define von der Leyen’s remaining time in office.
1. Reversing Europe’s decline
Will von der Leyen be able to stem the Continent’s economic decline … or oversee the death of its industrial heartlands?
It was von der Leyen who asked former Italian PM and European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi to draw up a report into the continent’s competitiveness. He was brutal in his assessment, saying that “without action, we will have to either compromise our welfare, our environment or our freedom.” He called on Europe to invest an additional €800 billion a year to drag itself out of a trough of low productivity and feeble growth that’s pushing it behind the U.S. and China in the international pecking order.