The Brief – Inside Queen Ursula’s brand-new castle

The European Parliament may have given Ursula von der Leyen’s college of commissioners a nod with a timid margin, but don’t be fooled: ‘Queen Ursula’ has more power than ever before.

The College, as it has been approved by lawmakers earlier on Wednesday (27 November), is “the right team for this moment in Europe’s history,” von der Leyen said minutes after the vote.

Because it is a victory for her, too.

The approval paves the way for von der Leyen's near-total power over the College, diluting responsibilities where necessary for the power balance to work in her favour.

It also sees her political family EPP largely reinforced in the European Parliament.

That the College passed with the thinnest margin in 30 years – with 370 votes in favour to 282 against – takes nothing away from the fact that she now has free reign to push through the files and reforms as she pleases.

“Von der Leyen was the most clever of all,” Renaissance delegation (Renew) President Marie-Pierre Vedrenne told Euractiv before the vote.

She and centre-right EPP's top man Manfred Weber outmanoeuvred their other two partners from the historic ‘central’ coalition after a week of nail-biting political negotiations over Commission executive vice-president (EVP) positions – ending up in nothing more than minor tweaks to a handful of portfolios.

Weber has offered the social democrats (S&D) and the liberal Renew Europe group a ‘platform agreement’ (imagine a coalition agreement, but non-binding and badly written) in exchange for a College as von der Leyen first introduced it. One that would see hard-right Raffaele Fitto (ECR), a member of the Italian post-fascist Fratelli d’Italia party, take on a Commission EVP role.

In turn, Weber and von der Leyen – who are both Germans and CDU members but allegedly not each other's biggest fans – have secured kingmaker control over majority building for the years to come.

In parliamentary arithmetic, and for the first time in recent history, there is more than one possible majority to rely on to adopt European files.

Beyond the traditional S&D-Renew-EPP majority – which has often, in the past, included the Greens – lies a new, right-leaning ‘alternative’ coalition, uniting the EPP, the hard-right European Conservatives and Reformist (ECR) group and the far-right Patriots for Europe and European of Sovereign Nations.

While Weber went to flirt with ECR’s Giorgia Meloni troops to secure their votes, the Commission president cajoled the Greens, reiterated her commitment to push full steam ahead on the missing chapters of the Green Deal, and even appointed former Green lawmaker Philippe Lamberts as her adviser – a nice-to-have Commission press services made public some 48 hours before the vote.

And just like that, von der Leyen now gets to be the queen of the chessboard, choosing which of the two majorities to rely on. Meanwhile, Weber, in all negotiating instances with centre and left-leaning forces, will have the freedom to threaten to turn to ECR if he does not get his way.

As one S&D lawmaker said: “She conceded to the far right. Now Weber is the Parliament’s strongman, and von der Leyen, the lady of the house.”

Von der Leyen’s plan was robust enough that the Parliament said yes to her Commission team – and how it would be run, too.

Commissioners in charge of interinstitutional relations and simplification will report directly to von der Leyen, as she has made cutting red tape one of her primordial goals. Efficiency or micromanagement, take your pick.

Some of the EVPs she has appointed are junior, with little political gravitas.

In the most public of fashion, she had former headstrong Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton resign, and France’s President Emmanuel Macron pick Stéphane Séjourné instead – seen by many to be lacking the necessary experience for the job.

Little-known socialist Roxana Mînzatu was given the EVP post in charge of people, skills and preparedness – whatever that means. Frans Timmermans, who spearheaded the Green Deal in the previous legislative, despite conservatives’ every concern, is also out for good.

Meanwhile, von der Leyen has cleverly kept key EPP allies by her side, including Economy and Prosperity’s Valdis Dombrovskis and Climate’s Wopke Hoekstra – two former commissioners who, if necessary, can bypass their more junior EVPs.

So, behind the surface of a low-bar majority lies a sea of power and control for von der Leyen in the next few years.

“We must get ready for conflictual negotiations,” top French S&D lawmaker Raphaël Glucksmann sighed.

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