Ursula von der Leyen will be the People's Party candidate
for the presidency of the EU Commission.
The announcement was awaited, foreseen, studied down to the smallest detail.
A few hours before the deadline set by the EPP expired, the number one of the European executive communicated her desire to run for an encore to her national party, the CDU.
And he kicked off his electoral campaign from Berlin.
Less Green Deal, more attention to competitiveness and an axiom that will run through the spring: "The far right wants to destroy Europe".
Von der Leyen's seems like a re-nomination but it isn't.
In 2019
the Spitzenkandidaten of the EPP was the current president and group leader of the People's Party, Manfred Weber.
The name Ursula emerged only at the European Council following the vote and was a wild card that had Angela Merkel as her deus ex machina and Emmanuel Macron as her decisive support.
This time the former German Defense Minister, born in Ixelles and raised on bread and Europe, will have to take the field personally.
Finding herself in the delicate management of her dual role: president of the Commission which represents the general interest and candidate of the EPP.
Much will depend on the results of the June 6-9 vote but, at the moment, von der Leyen does not seem to have any opponents: the only other Spitzenkandidaten announced is that of the socialists.
He responds to the name of the Luxembourger Nicolas Schmit, current Labor Commissioner and to a choice that many in Brussels saw as an implicit support for the outgoing president.
The political battle, in fact, will not be so much
between the EPP and socialists but primarily between pro-Europeans and anti-EU parties.
The rise of the right and the sovereignists is a constant in the latest polls and could upset the hitherto solid balance of community power, based on the popular-socialist-liberal triad.
It is no coincidence that von der Leyen immediately made one point clear: "The most important thing is democracy, the rule of law and the peace that we have built together", and "the task of this electoral campaign" is to "make this clear to our adversaries, that is, Putin and his friends, whether it is the AfD, Marine Le Pen, Wilders or other extreme forces. They want to destroy Europe", he said at a press conference from Berlin.
The names cited by von der Leyen are not coincidental.
In the EPP the trend is to dialogue with one part of the right and exclude another, on the basis of three conditions that Weber has been repeating for weeks: being pro-EU, pro-Ukraine and in favor of the rule of law.
The objective is therefore to gain the support of the right parties considered to be more open to dialogue, starting with Giorgia Meloni's FdI.
Von der Leyen has been focusing on her for some time to secure her confirmation, with positive results so far.
Among the 27, the current president has a great advantage.
Berlin, although led by a socialist chancellor, has already secured his support.
Pedro Sanchez's Spain will not be outdone
while Macron, taking advantage of the EU's acceleration on European defence, has had his advantage.
Von der Leyen needs a qualified majority of 26 and he will probably get it.
The situation is different in the European Chamber, where the EPP-S&D-Renew majority risks being too narrow to sleep soundly.
The support of part of the right or, alternatively, of the Greens will be needed.
But it is the first ones that the EPP has been looking at for some time.
In this sense, in the Popular Party, the evolution of the Conservatives and Reformists group, where FdI sits, is carefully looked at.
And the hypothesis of Fidesz's entry, announced by Viktor Orban himself, would greatly complicate Meloni's dialogue with the moderate centre-right.
Von der Leyen will close her mandate with two actions that will be pillars of the next 5 years:
European defense and the sprint towards the competitiveness of a continent besieged by wars,
weakened by China's commercial aggressiveness and intimidated by Donald Trump's return to the USA.
The Green Deal will remain a priority but, as he has already demonstrated with farmers, von der Leyen will tone down its push.
And then there is always the variable of emergencies, which marked Ursula's first mandate, who found herself facing first Covid and then the war in Ukraine.
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