It’s that time of the year: the State of the European Union speech.
Known in jargon as SOTEU, the hour-long address marks the start of the working season after the balmy holidays of August. Its protagonist, the president of the European Commission, relishes the all-eyes-on-me moment to show off recent achievements, preview forthcoming initiatives and set the political tone for the next 12 months.
This year, however, the speech will sound anything but victorious.
When Ursula von der Leyen steps on the floor of the European Parliament on Wednesday morning, she will find herself in a position that has until now evaded her: fragility.
A virtual stranger when she was first elected in 2019, the Commission chief managed to gradually cultivate an image of a dependable and efficient leader who could steer the bloc through troubled waters and thrust integration into uncharted depths.
Her response to the COVID-19 pandemic saw her executive undertake the unprecedented tasks of purchasing life-saving vaccines for 450 million citizens and rolling out a recovery fund based on the large-scale issuance of common debt. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine further bolstered her credentials, rising to be one of the leading voices in the Western front against Vladimir Putin’s aggressive invasion.
At the end of 2022, Forbes magazine named Ursula von der Leyen the world’s most powerful woman, a title she has since retained. Last year, she cruised to re-election, amassing 401 votes for a second term, a tally larger than observers had anticipated.
But in the span of only a few months, her standing has taken a sharp tailspin, with accusations and reproaches coming from all sides of the political spectrum to create an uncomfortable impression of a president under fire.
The mounting opposition came to a boil in July, when von der Leyen was forced to defend her presidency against a motion of censure filed by hard-right MEPs. While defiant against the motion’s proponents, whom she lambasted as Russian-controlled “puppets”, she made sure to offer an olive branch to the other legislators.
“I recognise that there are members who may not have signed this motion but who do have legitimate concerns about some of the issues it raises,” she told them.
“That is fair enough. It is part of our democracy, and I will always be ready to debate any issue that this house wants, with facts and with arguments.”
The overture seems to have fallen flat: two further separate motions of censure are already underway, an ominous preview for the new working year.
“Ursula von der Leyen is facing a tricky task in her State of the Union,” said Fabian Zuleeg, chief executive director at the European Policy Centre (EPC), pointing to the domestic tumult besetting many member states, such as France, as another headache.
“The best she can hope for is to hold the ship steady, so it is unlikely that this State of the Union will put forward the truly ambitious agenda that is needed.”
A most hated deal
Dissatisfaction with von der Leyen’s presidency is everywhere in the Parliament.
Her own political family, the European People’s Party (EPP), has launched an all-out offensive to undermine the legislation passed under the Green Deal, which von der Leyen once proudly described as the bloc’s “man on the moon moment”.
The EPP has at times voted in sync with hard- and far-right forces to achieve that objective, triggering the fury of socialists, liberals and greens, who consider this informal alliance a breach of the promise that von der Leyen made in her re-election campaign.
Back then, the Commission chief had rejected pursuing a structured cooperation with the hard right, a key demand from progressives to lend her votes. But the EPP, unbound by her statement, seized on the momentum to simplify regulation, enthusiastically embraced by member states, to move its anti-Green Deal agenda to the next stage.
The ideological clash has fractured the pro-European centrist coalition that was supposed to anchor von der Leyen’s second term. By the time she put her brand-new College of Commissioners to a vote in Parliament, the tally was 370 votes in favour, noticeably below the 401 votes she had received just a few months earlier.
From then on, the cracks only deepened.
The bloc’s reluctance to sanction Israel over its war on Gaza has enraged left-wing MEPs and pushed Teresa Ribera, the Commission’s second in command, to break ranks in public. The proposal to reduce the bloc’s greenhouse gas emissions by 90% by the end of 2040 has been widely decried by conservatives, who have vowed to kill it.
But it is the EU-US trade deal that has sent the opposition into overdrive.
Under the terms, which von der Leyen finalised in a face-to-face meeting with Donald Trump in Scotland, the vast majority of EU-made goods bound for the US market are subject to a 15% tariff, while the vast majority of US-made goods bound for the EU market are exempt from duties. (A select group of products, such as aircraft, critical raw materials and semiconductor equipment, benefits from a “zero-for-zero” scheme.)
Additionally, the bloc has committed to spending $750 billion on American energy, investing $600 billion in the American economy and buying $40 billion worth of American AI chips by the end of Trump’s mandate. The US did not make any similar pledges.
Given the Commission’s exclusive competence to set commercial policy, the blame for the extremely lopsided deal has fallen largely on von der Leyen, damaging what had until now been her greatest asset: her reputation as a skilled crisis manager.
Most worryingly for von der Leyen, the harshest critiques have come from the staunchly pro-European forces behind her coalition, who feel the deal is a capitulation that subjugates the bloc to American designs and torpedoes the goal of strategic autonomy.
Nathalie Tocci, the director of the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI), believes accountability should be shared with member states, who “undercut” the executive’s negotiating hand by speaking up publicly to defend their individual interests.
“The problem really is the way in which growing nationalism within Europe (and) the rise of the far right, have basically eviscerated and hollowed out what an integrationist EU agenda might be – and very clearly, almost by definition, this is what the Commission is in the business of,” Tocci told Euronews.
“I think it would be unfair to blame (the deal) exclusively on von der Leyen for it, because in many respects she is the victim of a broader political context. You can say that she’s not doing enough to address it, but there’s only so much she can do about it.”
After days of silence, von der Leyen admitted the agreement was “solid yet imperfect” and insisted it would, at least, provide “stability and predictability” at a time of turmoil. Shortly after, the claim fell apart when Trump himself threatened to apply extra tariffs in retaliation for the Commission’s €2.95 billion antitrust fine against Google.
By the time she takes the floor to deliver her address in Strasbourg, she will meet an audience that might prefer contrition to explanation.