“There isn’t enough listening [in the Commission]. There isn’t enough listening to the people,” he said.
Von der Leyen has long been accused of sidelining critics, promoting allies, governing through close aides and employing a Machiavellian divide-and-rule strategy during her years running the EU’s executive arm, which is made up of representatives from the bloc’s 27 member states.
Barnier singled out excessive regulation and slow progress on integrating capital markets across the EU as major failures of the Commission during the von der Leyen years. The former French prime minister did, however, credit von der Leyen with successfully responding to the crises she faced, which have included the Covid pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Though Barnier and von der Leyen belong to the same political family, the conservative European People’s Party, they have bad blood that dates back to the last days of the Brexit negotiations. According to Barnier, von der Leyen sidelined him as talks with then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson reached the endgame in 2020.
“I thought it would be normal, after the work I’d done, to be by her side in the last hours. But it was not the case,” he said.
A spokesperson for the European Commission declined to comment.
