Second term for world's most powerful woman

Andrew Hammond

Ursula von der Leyen, the world's most powerful woman politician, won a second term on Thursday as European Commission president. Yet, while the decision indicates stability, big change is on the horizon as the EU faces a potentially hugely difficult five years ahead.

Von der Leyen's governing focus will now be on the so-called EU strategic agenda 2024-2029. This is a policy plan that sets the bloc's direction and goals in the second half of the decade based around three main pillars: a prosperous, competitive Europe; a free, democratic Europe; plus a strong, secure Europe.

Von der Leyen has made clear she believes it is critical for the more than 400 million population bloc to be ambitious and further seize the initiative in coming years. The alternative, in her view, is more drift that characterized EU affairs for so long.

For there are opportunities on the horizon, there are also risks too. Indeed, recent years have seen a huge growth in domestic and external challenges.

On the domestic front, there has been a significant rise of anti-EU, nationalist sentiment across the continent, which has seen populist arguments coming to the fore, as well as the perceived erosion of the fundamental values of liberal democracy. This is personified in Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban, who enjoys the closest relationship with Vladimir Putin of any EU leader. He took over the EU's six-month rotating presidency on July 1.

On the international front is a geopolitical reality defined not just by an increasingly assertive Russia. There is also massive uncertainty from the United States with November's US presidential election offering a stark international relations choice between the strong Atlanticist Joe Biden, and the pro-Brexit, anti-EU Donald Trump.

As well as von der Leyen, the EU is in the midst of picking a wider new leadership too. This includes appointment of the EU's foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, an anti-Russian and anti-China hawk who is strongly supportive of Ukraine, and was previously Estonian prime minister.

Whereas Kallas and other senior figures, like incoming European Council President and former Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa, will play a key role in Brussels in the next half-decade, it will be von der Leyen's role which will be pivotal — if she wins the support of MEPs. The crisis-type environment she finds herself in is one that Europe has sometimes found congenial, in the past, to enable the pathway to ever closer union.

A good example here is the Commission of Jacques Delors, whom von der Leyen is sometimes compared in terms of the significant historical consequence of her presidency. Coming to office during a troubled period for the bloc, the presidency of Delors is seen by many as giving what is the present-day EU a clear sense of direction, including as the founding father of the Euro single currency. In his first term from 1985, he rallied the bloc to the call of the single market, and when appointed to a second term, he urged Europeans toward the ambitious goals of economic, monetary and political union.

The economic agenda is also key to any von der Leyen second term. A new global competitiveness report will in September be released by Mario Draghi, the former European Central Bank chief, which she wants to harness to drive an economic reform agenda in coming years.

It remains to be seen if history will see von der Leyen's presidency as being as historically important as that of Delors, but she has nonetheless delivered a number of big achievements with the possibility of more on the horizon. This includes a possible new wave of EU enlargement eastwards, including negotiations opening this month with Ukraine.

In this challenging context, a second term for von der Leyen would likely forgo any political honeymoon, requiring her to hit the ground running. The forthcoming decisions will be crucial in defining the EU's longer-term political and economic character. She may now have a historic window of opportunity in late 2024, before a potential second Trump presidency, to forge a stronger, sustainable path for the continent before storm clouds gather again.

Andrew Hammond is an associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics.