Yves right here. Our Nick Corbishley has typically criticized Ursula von der Leyen’s corruption and willingness to spice up predictably unhealthy aggressively neoliberal/neocon coverage concept. However her pending re-installation as the queen of Europe the president of the European Fee gives one more alternative to overview her sorry report. One indicator of her incompetence: she’s managed to make her predecessor Jean-Claude Juncker look good.
And please welcome our new contributor George Georgiou. In case you are good to him, maybe he’ll submit different posts.
By George Georgiou, an economist who for a few years labored on the Central Financial institution of Cyprus in varied senior roles, together with Head of Governor’s Workplace through the monetary disaster
To be accused of impropriety on one event could also be thought to be a misfortune however to be accused on 4 events seems to be like carelessness. (With apologies to Oscar Wilde)
If there’s one particular person who, greater than anybody else, symbolises the ineptitude of the European Fee then it’s absolutely the Fee’s president, Ursula von der Leyen (hereafter, VDL).
Questions on VDL’s lack of probity first surfaced in 2015 when she was accused of plagiarising her doctoral dissertation. She was ultimately cleared of the accusations however because the BBC reported on 9 March 2016, the president of the Hannover Medical Faculty, Christopher Baum, conceded that “Ms von der Leyen’s thesis did comprise plagiarised materials”, however he added “there had been no intent to deceive”. Her first fortunate escape.
VDL’s lack of probity continued whereas she served as Germany’s Minister of Defence between 2013 and 2019. Throughout her tenure on the ministry, she grew to become embroiled in a scandal relating to funds of €250 million to consultants associated to arms contracts. Germany’s Federal Audit Workplace discovered that, of the €250 million declared for consultancy charges, solely €5.1 million had been spent. Moreover, one of many consultants was McKinsey & Firm, the place VDL’s son was an affiliate, thus elevating a doable battle of curiosity. It additionally emerged that messages associated to the contracts had been deleted from two of VDL’s cellphones. Though she was ultimately cleared of corruption allegations, questions over her probity throughout that interval stay to this present day.
Having survived two scandals, VDL couldn’t consider her luck when in July 2019 Macron, along with Merkel, bypassed the Spitzenkadidaten course of and nominated her as Jean-Claude Junker’s successor as head of the European Fee. The Spitzenkadidaten course of, via which the lead candidate emerges and is then ratified by the European Parliament, is itself considerably arcane. In VDL’s case, she was lucky that the EU couldn’t agree on both of the 2 lead candidates on the time, Martin Weber and Frans Timmermans. It was thus left to the consummate fixer, Macron, and VDL’s mentor, Merkel, to come back to an settlement utilizing that nice democratic and clear device referred to as the ‘backroom deal’. VDL’s nomination was accepted by the European Council and on 16 July the European Parliament voted to simply accept her appointment. Nevertheless it was an in depth vote. Out of a complete of 747 MEPs, solely 383 voted for her, 327 voted towards, 22 abstained, and one vote was invalid. Beneath the EU guidelines, the president of the Fee should be elected with greater than 50% of the MEP votes. Thus, she obtained solely 9 votes greater than the brink. Examine this to her predecessor, Juncker, who in 2014 obtained 422 votes.
After she was appointed president of the European Fee, VDL once more grew to become embroiled in controversy, this time involving the procurement of the Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer. The scandal, which the media dubbed Pfizergate, associated to the acquisition of 1.8 billion doses of the Pfizer vaccine to be used throughout the EU. It transpired that: a) the variety of doses was far higher than was required, leading to a major quantity having to be both destroyed or donated; b) the surplus doses value the EU €4 billion; c) the full worth of the contract, which Politico reported as being roughly €20 billion, was inflated; and d) essentially the most damaging cost, the contract for the vaccines was negotiated immediately between VDL and Albert Bourla, the CEO of Pfizer. The negotiations have been carried out utilizing sms messages, which VDL later claimed to have deleted.
The New York Occasions, which initially carried out the investigation into Pfizergate, introduced a lawsuit towards the European Fee for failing to offer entry to the sms conversations between VDL and Bourla. In Belgium, a lobbyist, Frederic Baldan, filed a prison criticism citing corruption and the destruction of paperwork. The Belgian lawsuit was ultimately taken over by the European Public Prosecutors Workplace, which opened a prison investigation. The end result of those authorized proceedings/investigations remains to be pending.
One would have thought that the imprudent VDL would have discovered a lesson from all these transgressions however evidently nothing will stand in the way in which of Ursula and an excellent scandal. Which brings us to her newest impropriety, cronyism. In January of this 12 months, VDL had appointed fellow CDU politician, Martin Pieper, to a newly created and profitable publish of particular envoy for SMEs. The appointment was reported by La Matinale Europeenne in February nevertheless it wasn’t till April that the controversy surrounding the appointment obtained large protection within the English language media.
The appointment was controversial for 2 causes: 1) the recruitment course of was flawed and a pair of) the selection of Pieper was seen as politically motivated. On the primary difficulty, it was revealed by an nameless EU official that there had been two different candidates, one from Sweden and one from the Czech Republic, who had scored higher than Pieper within the recruitment course of.
On the second difficulty, there was robust suspicion that Pieper had been chosen by VDL as a way to curry favour with the CDU and thus win their backing for her reappointment as head of the European Fee. The appointment sparked a robust response each from different members of the Fee and from MEPs. 4 senior Commissioners, together with Joseph Borrell and the Inside Market Commissioner, Thiery Breton, wrote to VDL on 27 March expressing their concern concerning the appointment’s lack of transparency and impartiality. On 11 April, MEPs voted by 382 to 144 to rescind Pieper’s appointment. Though the vote was not binding on the Fee, Pieper’s place grew to become untenable and on 16 April he resigned. Within the phrases of Daniel Freund, a German/Greens MEP, reported on Euronews, it was “unhappy and shameful”. He added: “I don’t understand how we will clarify it to the voters”.
On the time of writing, Euronews has reported {that a} deal has been sealed for her reappointment. It’s not clear when the European Parliament will previously vote for her nevertheless it’s prone to be later this week. The precise date is a trivial matter. What isn’t trivial is that VDL’s reappointment for an additional 5 years, regardless of all of the improprieties talked about above, would verify what many have been advocating for a while, that the EU wants radical reform. EU residents must see that EU establishments are way more clear, accountable and democratic.
