Presidential power wars: Von der Leyen vs. Michel

The fight over who is the true president of Europe didn’t start with Sofagate.

Rather, the episode in Ankara was the ugly apex of a fierce struggle over who should represent the EU on the world stage that started almost immediately after December 1, 2019 — when European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen took office alongside her counterpart, European Council President Charles Michel.

That struggle dramatically re-​entered the public eye on Monday, when von der Leyen leveled a stunning allegation of sexism before the European Parliament. In forceful testimony, she implicated Michel in her diplomatic downgrade during a joint visit to Turkey: “I felt hurt and I felt alone, as a woman and as a European.”

But if von der Leyen had traveled alone, she would not have been denied a chair while meeting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. And the EU would have avoided an embarrassing incident that has revealed bitter tensions and deep mistrust between its top two officials.

The setting for the breakdown — overseas, during a trip meant to present a united EU front amid fraught relations with a crucial geopolitical partner — was emblematic of a long-running rivalry between the two leaders over foreign policy. The jockeying has damaged the EU’s international reputation, raising doubts about its ability to act on the world stage and renewing questions about whether its leadership structure is fundamentally flawed.

Von der Leyen, a former German defense minister who is the first woman to lead the Commission and the first president in a quarter-century to not previously serve as a government chief, initially proclaimed her intention of leading a “geopolitical Commission.” And in her very first week in office, she jetted off to Ethiopia to meet with counterparts of the African Union and signal a pivot by the EU to its continental neighbor.

But Michel, who served as Belgian prime minister for five years before resigning to become Council president, had his own designs on representing the EU abroad. In February 2020, he made a trip to Ethiopia for meetings on the sidelines of the African Union’s annual summit.

The competition between the two presidents was fully underway. But in fact, the tension had surfaced earlier, virtually from the moment von der Leyen and Michel took office.

Dueling EU presidents

On January 19, 2020, Michel, von der Leyen and the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, Josep Borrell, had all attended a conference in Berlin on the civil war in Libya — an awkward triple appearance given the EU’s limited role in security matters. Michel delivered his own statement, while von der Leyen and Borrell were left to issue a joint statement.

“It was ridiculous of course to have three interventions by the EU in Berlin,” said a diplomat familiar with the planning of the meeting. “But they had to choose who would speak for the EU, and it was logical that it be the president of the European Council.”

Von der Leyen and her team, however, were not pleased. “They hated it. They really really hated it,” the official said.

A Commission official said there were important policy reasons for von der Leyen’s presence both in Africa, where she sought to forge new relations based on “mutual respect,” and at the Libya conference in Berlin. The officials said von der Leyen was invited to Berlin personally by German Chancellor Angela Merkel to outline a broad package of assistance through various EU foreign aid programs.

“This package of concrete measures,” the official said, “was presented to the plenary and concretely offered to then-U.N. Special Representative [Ghassan] Salamé by President von der Leyen.”

But days later, on January 23, von der Leyen once again found herself in a secondary role to Michel, at the World Holocaust Forum in Jerusalem, as he placed a wreath on behalf of the EU during a memorial ceremony. Video of the event shows von der Leyen and European Parliament President David Sassoli following Michel, and then each gently touching the flower arrangement he had placed in position.

Less than three weeks after Michel made his visit to Addis Ababa, von der Leyen was back in the Ethiopian capital leading a large delegation of commissioners for a meeting at the African Union headquarters.

At the time, some African officials expressed surprise at the sudden, intense interest from Europe, thinking that perhaps the EU’s new leaders were showing off for constituents back home. In hindsight, it was evidence of a tug of war underway between the presidents.

Historic origins

Institutional tension is nothing new in the EU, where as many as 10 or more leaders can claim the title “president.” And skirmishing is particularly common between the Commission, the executive arm that wields all the power of the EU’s civil service, budgetary and regulatory authority, and the Council, which brings together the 27 national heads of state and government, who ultimately serve as the bosses of the EU’s top bosses.

Those battles have grown fiercer since the 2007 Lisbon Treaty created the permanent European Council president position, a role that previously had been filled by the leader of whichever country held the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU.

When the EU won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012, for example, Council President Herman Van Rompuy and Commission President José Manuel Barroso jointly delivered the Nobel lecture. (Parliament President Martin Schulz happily collected the gold medal).

And von der Leyen’s predecessor, Jean-Claude Juncker, even called for combining the two jobs in his 2017 State of the European Union speech.

“Europe would function better if we were to merge the presidents,” Juncker said, adding: “Europe would be easier to understand if one captain was steering the ship.”

Some diplomats and officials say the acute tension between von der Leyen and Michel is the price the European Council is now paying for having selected a relatively weaker leadership slate, in hopes of keeping the EU subservient to national capitals.

Juncker had served as prime minister of Luxembourg for 19 years before taking the helm of the Commission in 2014, while his Council counterpart, Donald Tusk, had been a seasoned politician in Poland, where he served nearly seven years as prime minister.

Some said von der Leyen faced the impossible task of emerging from the shadow of her mentor, Merkel, for whom she served as leader of three different ministries.

“I see it in the dynamic in the European Council,” said a diplomat who has observed von der Leyen among the heads of state and government. “When Merkel is not around, she wants to be a superstar, but when Merkel is around, Merkel still sees her as her minister. They know each other. They like each other. But she’s not a peer. And if you feel this, you overcompensate.” 

Another former senior European official who has interacted personally with the leaders said Michel was the one who was overcompensating, trying to make up for an unremarkable one-term stint as prime minister in Belgium, and to add stature to his current post, which is primarily responsible for convening meetings of the European Council where the 27 heads around the table make the actual decisions.

Michel, the former senior official said, has “really been acting as a foreign policy president. And in that sense, the tension is real.”

The tensions only grew worse as the EU was thrown into the crisis of the coronavirus pandemic, with all of the officials under stress. Moments of joint triumph, such as the adoption of the landmark €1.82 trillion budget and recovery package last July, were also marked by unease over who could claim the most credit.

Von der Leyen, for instance, refused to participate in a documentary about EU summits, which included a focus on the July meeting on the budget, because her team believed that it was largely a publicity stunt for Michel. A joke emerged among critics of the Commission president: She was not leading the geopolitical Commission, but the ego-political Commission.

More recently, von der Leyen declined to sign on to Michel’s proposal for a new, international treaty on pandemics, which has won the support of more than 100 world leaders.

The fateful Turkey trip

It was against this backdrop that the two ended up in the presidential palace in Ankara, on April 6, with Michel readily claiming his seat next to Erdoğan, as a stunned von der Leyen uttered “Ähm ...” and raised an upturned palm in question, before taking her seat on the not-so-nearby sofa.

While it may seem unusual, or even crazy, from an external perspective to have two presidents on the same trip, it often makes perfect sense given the EU’s supranational structure.

In Ankara, for example, crucial issues under discussion included migration and Turkey’s place in the EU’s customs union — policy areas under the Commission’s purview. At the same time, the most important decisions on the EU’s relationship with Turkey must be made by the 27 heads of state and government, and Michel steers their Council summit meetings. It was a point Turkish officials themselves acknowledged, saying they had no interest or motive to offend von der Leyen during the visit.

In the days after the sofa incident, things only got worse. Michel was slow to apologize. And von der Leyen’s chief of staff broke with protocol by sending a letter under his own name to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, declining an invitation on the president’s behalf to an independence celebration that Michel had already agreed to attend.

The continuing anger over the episode burst back into public view on Monday as a result of von der Leyen’s emotional testimony in Parliament, much to the dismay of EU ambassadors, who, during a meeting two weeks ago, had pleaded with senior aides to convince their bosses to let it go.

During the meeting, several ambassadors — all of them men — complained that the controversy between the presidents had made the EU seem dysfunctional and was causing serious reputational damage on the world stage.

One ambassador noted that the EU countries were well-accustomed to institutional rivalries in Brussels, but said it was incumbent on the institutions not to let those tensions “get out of control.”

The ambassadors’ meeting only seemed to confirm that opinions on Sofagate hinged heavily on each viewer’s personal experience and perspective. And many of those opinions are nuanced, with even some strong supporters of women’s rights worried about the fallout of such an unseemly public fight.

One female EU diplomat said Michel deserved criticism but that von der Leyen should have made the point and moved on, rather than re-up the issue in Parliament.

“Michel didn’t realize the importance of it, OK, and I was also upset by the situation. But to then continue on this specific point is not appropriate,” the diplomat said. Von der Leyen, the diplomat added, “should not continue to refer to a specific situation, it should be a point about women’s rights in general.”

A second female EU diplomat said that von der Leyen ultimately should avoid any perception that she is using the Ankara incident to gain institutional advantage for the Commission at Michel’s expense. Shortly after returning from Turkey, von der Leyen’s office sent a letter demanding new working arrangements, including some concessions that Michel’s team said could not be implemented without formal changes to the EU treaties.

A third female diplomat praised von der Leyen for directly addressing the historic mistreatment of women. “It definitely happened because she was a woman,” the diplomat said. “Enough is enough. What people don’t appreciate is that women of that generation have had to suck it up for a really long time.”

A male EU diplomat, however, accused von der Leyen of putting herself ahead of the EU’s reputation on the world stage.

“She fought an honorable fight not out of conviction but rather out of opportunity,” the diplomat said. “The president took a Howitzer to neighborly disturbance showing no regard for the collateral damage elsewhere.”

But von der Leyen’s decision to level a public accusation of sexism in the Parliament plenary, as an evidently pained Michel stood by, seems to have rallied support for her, particularly among MEPs.

“It was a very emotional speech, something that would never have happened 10 years ago,” said Anna Cavazzini, a German MEP from the Green party. “We all felt like being in von der Leyen’s shoes,” Cavazzini said. “I was even surprised about how open she was in plenary, I was surprised about how clear she was.”

At the same time, Cavazzini said the remarks were evidence of a major breach between the presidents. “It just shows how really bad their relationship is,” she said. “And this internal competition seems stronger than before.”