BRUSSELS ― A farcical few days at the European Commission has raised questions about the communications effectiveness of President Ursula von der Leyen, with contradictory press statements, evidence of infighting and accusations that she bowed to external pressure all contributing to the sense of an institution in disarray.
Friday’s announcement by spokesperson Maciej Berestecki that “the Commission intends to withdraw” a proposed greenwashing law sent shockwaves through EU politics ― outraging centrist political groups who had supported von der Leyen’s leadership bid and prompting some of her colleagues to brief against her.
In the hours after the announcement, commission officials claimed behind the scenes that the EU executive would not, in fact, withdraw the bill as long as the European Parliament and the Council ― which is composed of national governments ― agreed to exempt small businesses from complying. Yet spokespeople doubled down on their statement to the contrary later that same day.
The public outcry from the Socialists and the liberals, who accused von der Leyen of yielding to the political demands of her own European People’s Party, as well as, crucially, forces from the far right who have always hated the law, triggered a frenzy of phone calls over the weekend. Those twists and turns ultimately led to the Commission’s officially backtracking on Monday.
“If microenterprises are exempted from the scope of the directive, we will not withdraw it,” Berestecki said.
On Tuesday officials also let it be known that von der Leyen had never wanted the law canceled in the first place. That despite the apparent frustration of one of her Socialist executive vice-presidents, Teresa Ribera, at the turn of events, and her internal lobbying to try to salvage the law, according to officials. Ribera even made a less-than-subtle plea on social media.
What is not clear ― and what no one seems to want to answer ― is whether the fiasco was a genuine communications error or, as many observers believe, the result of confused politics, or at least shock over the unintended consequences those politics triggered. In private, whispers abound that communications officials are being made the fall guys for bad decisions by those in power, but no one will go close to saying that on the record.
On Tuesday evening, Commission spokesperson Stefan De Keersmaecker didn’t directly answer a POLITICO question on whether there had been a communications error, and said that fellow spokesperson Paula Pinho’s “explanations clarify our position quite well.”
Those comments, made on Monday, were that the Commission will “wait until the next inter- institutional discussion” on the law and see if the Parliament and the Council agree to exempt very small businesses from the scope of the law. If so, the Commission would reconsider its position. This was a “suggestion” and not, as was said on Friday, an “intention,” according to her remarks.
The Italian angle
The uncertainty over what the Commission was up to led national diplomats and European Parliament lawmakers to spread a theory ― which at this stage no one seems able to prove and which the Commission vehemently denies ― that von der Leyen was in cahoots with Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
The idea was that when von der Leyen visited Meloni in Rome last week she pushed Italy to cancel its support for the law, thereby taking the pressure off the Commission. Italy has indeed done so ― making the law even less likely to become a reality ― but everyone denies von der Leyen had a hand in it.
“This is a proposal that Italy has never supported,” one diplomat said.
What the incident has undoubtedly done is to set off fireworks in all sorts of different directions. It has raised serious concerns about von der Leyen’s grip on power; triggered one-time allies and her own commissioners to move against her; and emboldened the far right, which last week celebrated the apparent axing of the greenwashing law.
The missteps and confusion of the past few days seem to have let a genie out of the bottle. Whether it’s a matter of negotiations over climate rules or the EU’s seven-year-budget, politics in Brussels is heating up.
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