Key EU Leaders Agree on Ursula Von Der Leyen for Second Term
EU leaders representing the three main political groups in the bloc have agreed, on Tuesday, to put European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen forward for a second term.
The European Union’s 27 leaders head to Brussels on Thursday for a two-day summit intended to divide up the bloc’s top jobs in the wake of this month’s European Parliament elections.
Ahead of the gathering, six leaders acting as chief negotiators have reached a deal that now needs to garner support from a weighted majority of 15 leaders at the summit.
The accord divvies up the key posts among the alliance dominating the parliament: The centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) and its partners, the Socialists and Democrats (S&D) and the centrist Renew Europe.
In addition to returning the EPP’s von der Leyen as commission chief, it taps former Portuguese prime minister Antonio Costa of the S&D as European Council president, and Renew’s Kaja Kallas, the current Estonian premier, as the EU’s foreign policy “high representative.”
The same trio of names had emerged during an informal first meeting in Brussels last week, but leaders had failed to seal the deal on that occasion.
The six negotiators were Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk for the EPP, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz for the S&D, and French President Emmanuel Macron and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte for Renew.
In Berlin, the head of Germany’s Christian Democrats, Friedrich Merz, confirmed the leaders’ agreement ahead of a meeting of his party, to which von der Leyen belongs.
