(This article was written by Hermann Tertsch and appeared in El Debate. Von der Leyen, notre amour)
The People’s Party in the European Parliament now has its candidate to preside over the European Commission, and it is the current president, Ursula von der Leyen. A Rhineland German, who was a minister under Angela Merkel — first highly controversial in the Ministry of Family, then an uncontroversial catastrophe in the Ministry of Defense — she was a last-minute compromise that Macron and Merkel pulled out of the hat in 2019 after many other failed options.
The People’s Party seems very pleased with the record, because it is putting her forward again. Even though in 2019 she was elected by only 9 votes out of 706, and all thanks to the naive Polish conservatives who believed her promise that at last, with her, the European Commission would respect a right-wing government in Poland. They voted in her favor and against the vote of all their colleagues in the ECR group, among them VOX, and very soon they understood the terrible mistake of having believed this German woman who called herself non-sectarian and open to all ideas and contributions.
The truth is that, in payment for that candid vote in favor, Von der Leyen has been the instigator of a policy of harassment, defamation, disinformation and economic blockade against the conservative government of Poland, until she managed, with Germany’s help, to bring it down. Today Poland is governed by the so-called Civic Platform (OP) of Donald Tusk in alliance with socialists and communists. Yes, Von der Leyen has achieved that historic feat of getting the communists to govern in Poland again. Mind you, in alliance with the partners of the PP and the PSOE.
The seizure of government by Donald Tusk — like Alberto Núñez Feijóo, a man from Von der Leyen’s ranks — has taken place with uproar, the storming of the media, the detention and intimidation of opponents, and the worst disinformation campaign there has been in Poland since General Wojciech Jaruselski left. But Von der Leyen has now gone to Poland and none of the brutal abuses of Tusk’s new government against the new opposition has troubled her. And she has announced to the head of government and his socialist and communist partners that she will shower them with goods, with billions of euros — all that money she had irregularly blocked from the previous government in order to mobilize the electorate against it.
Von der Leyen deceived the Poles, was elected by nine votes and suddenly became the replica of a Greta Thunberg advanced in years, with incendiary speeches against denialism and the far right. The far right being, for her, the conservatives, among them the Poles who had given her their vote in exchange for promises of pluralism and respect. Denialism includes all those who oppose the social engineering inspired by the radical environmentalism and climate hysteria of the Greens and by the interventionism and bureaucratic centralism of the socialists. Who triumph thanks to that unconditional adherence of the European People’s Party under the command of Mrs. Von der Leyen.
Von der Leyen has been the mother of the Green Deal, the implacable guardian of the drift toward a centralist state in which there is ever less subsidiarity and ever more mass controls from Brussels through a web of regulations, laws and directives that make life agonizingly difficult for some sectors of the population and absolutely impossible for others. The social-democratic, environmentalist and woke arrogance of this supposed German Christian Democrat has created the greatest disaffection ever felt toward the European Union. And today even her own party, which has spent all five years of the legislature without protesting the terrible direction policy had taken against agriculture, livestock farming, the agri-food industry, industry in general, research, energy and transport, and all the sectors affected by this regulatory frenzy.
Von der Leyen is not to blame for the fact that the People’s Party and the Socialists vote practically the same, always, in the European Parliament. In as much as 89% of the votes in this legislature, even if now, before the elections, the People’s Party is beginning to find fault with the automatic following of socialists, liberals and greens. Von der Leyen is indeed to blame for having led the Commission and that majority toward a centralist, interventionist and eco-climatic-hysterical ideological radicalism that does infinite harm to the nations.
In Von der Leyen’s favor, it must be said that her radicalism and despotism have done much to open the eyes of ever broader sectors of European societies. And her selection as the European leader of the various nations’ people’s parties, including the Spanish PP, makes it very clear that her intention is to continue with the policy that is causing endless disasters in Europe. The electoral forecasts suggest that Europeans have noticed. The only groups rising in the polls are the two to the right of the PP, which are the ECR with Vox and the Polish conservatives of PiS and Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia on one side, and the ID with Le Pen’s French, the Lega and the AfD on the other. All the rest, including the PP of Von der Leyen and Feijóo, are falling.
That being so, many movements can be expected on the European right, which for the first time can form a majority leaving out socialists, liberals, greens and communists. What is clear is that the PP is heading toward a rupture between those in its ranks who still have something conservative about them and those who are openly social-democratic. And it is clear that Von der Leyen will not count on the votes of the Polish conservatives this time.
Hermann Tertsch is a Distinguished Fellow (Honorary) at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.
