Ursula von der Leyen’s narrowly won homecoming

STRASBOURG — Now, Ursula von der Leyen knows what she’ll do this summer.

“I will now work on my work program for the next month and, of course, I want to form a team — highly dedicated,” she said Tuesday evening, having barely won confirmation to be the next European Commission president. She will be the first woman in history to hold the EU’s top job.

“Therefore, today, I am launching my call again for leaders to present the best candidates as European commissioners as possible and I want to see as many men as women around the College table,” the departing German defense minister, and confidante of Chancellor Angela Merkel, said alongside European Parliament President David Sassoli.

“Tomorrow I am going to be in Germany to bid farewell to my government and my troops,” she said, apparently using “troops” not as a political metaphor, but in the literal sense. “Then I am looking forward to plunge into the work here in Brussels to spend my summer here in Brussels or in Strasbourg.”

The Commission president-elect, who won ratification in Parliament by 383 votes to 327 with 22 abstentions — just surpassing the required 374-vote majority — admitted that the whirlwind two weeks since her nomination by the European Council had included moments of serious doubt.

“A few days ago, we weren’t sure at all whether there would be a majority or not,” she told a news conference with Sassoli.

Indeed, her margin of victory was so narrow that she immediately faced questions about the legitimacy and durability of her mandate. One British journalist pointed out that von der Leyen could be said to owe her election to British MEPs who supported her but may soon leave the EU should Brexit ever be accomplished — with the clear implication that they would take von der Leyen’s majority with them.

Others noted that von der Leyen would not have won without the support of some MEPs from Italy’s populist 5Star Movement, which is currently unaffiliated with any of the political groups in Parliament, and is most assuredly not counted among the pro-EU forces.

Von der Leyen brushed aside reporters’ questions about her close encounter with defeat. (Admittedly, this is an age in which the sitting president of the United States lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, and when Britain’s Brexit predicament is based on a 51.9 percent majority on a simplistically worded referendum question.)

Instead, von der Leyen noted dryly that Parliament had been fiercely divided over the future Commission president weeks before her name was in the mix.

“You know that before I was in the game, it was also difficult to find a stable platform majority,” she said.

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Von der Leyen did not need to mention that it was precisely the failure to form a majority in support of one of the lead candidates, or Spitzenkandidaten, that had led to her surprise nomination by EU national leaders.

She noted that several Green MEPs who apparently voted against her on Tuesday had nonetheless said that they were happier with her policy proposals this week than they had been a week earlier.

“I accept they have to get to know me, they have to get to know me and win confidence,” she said. “So my work will be with the pro-European parties to work for stable majorities.”

Von der Leyen appeared genuinely, physically relieved, suggesting that her demonstrative exhalation through pursed lips — whew! — in the hemicycle in Strasbourg moments after the vote tally was announced had not been an act.

“You see me still overwhelmed,” the 60-year-old German politician told reporters. “These were definitely the most intense two weeks of my political life.”

Von der Leyen still has a tough road ahead, and will be trailed by an ongoing investigation by the German parliament into allegations of mismanagement and overspending at the defense ministry during her tenure there. Shortly after the vote, news emerged from Berlin that she will be succeeded in the defense post by Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, leader of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union.

Von der Leyen’s path may also have been eased by another major personnel announcement on Tuesday — the imminent departure of Martin Selmayr, the top adviser to outgoing Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. The powerful German secretary-general of the Commission ruffled many feathers in Brussels during his ascent from Juncker’s Cabinet chief to the Commission’s top civil service post.

Despite her close victory, von der Leyen expressed supreme confidence in her ability to unite Europe and to take on the challenges ahead, noting how far she had come in just 13 days.

“I was born European,” she said. “And I come from a family that has European history. I always wanted to be back in the European environment.”

She noted that she spent most of her professional life as a medical doctor, only entering politics in her 40s and then joining Merkel at the start of the chancellor’s first term.

“I learned tremendously during those now 13 years with Angela Merkel,” von der Leyen said.

She recalled that her father once worked in the European Commission and had hoped to become a European commissioner, though that did not work out. Von der Leyen was born in Brussels and spent her early years at school there.

“I am really moved,” she said in French, “because this morning, one of my friends in the Parliament told me ‘your father is watching you.”’

“For me it’s coming home,” she said. “I think I could win the trust and the confidence of the Council and here the majority, because over the last, I think it’s 15 years now, being a minister in Germany, I have always worked in Europe. Because it is my passion. So it’s a feeling like coming home for me.”