BRUSSELS — If politicians’ careers live or die by communicating clearly to the masses, the president of the European Commission seems to have a problem.
Those who rely on Ursula von der Leyen’s media team for information to do their work ― journalists, lobbyists and even other Commission staff ― complain that unearthing the truth has never been tougher. Since the start of von der Leyen’s second term in December, her organization has been criticized for not being fully open or for giving confusing, contradictory or misleading information, according to the 12 Commission officials, lobbyists, EU policy experts, and reporters POLITICO spoke to.
The criticism speaks to wider doubts, expressed by allies and opponents alike, about her centralized leadership style they say makes the institution less transparent. It comes as she faces increased pressure from European governments and lawmakers — with two no-confidence votes scheduled for next week — with the center ground of EU politics crumbling.
Von der Leyen’s credibility as a leader and the EU’s position on the global stage are being constantly tested. Anti-European forces are growing, and the bloc’s economic and political heft is slipping. It’s at this moment the Commission needs a strong communicating arm, and many of the people POLITICO spoke to said the existing setup isn’t satisfactory.
“We are Europe’s executive chamber and we have a communication service that isn’t up to par with any of the capitals in terms of deliverables for the press,” said a senior Commission official, who, like others in this story, was granted anonymity to speak freely about colleagues and internal power dynamics at the Commission, and because they are not authorized to speak to the press on the record.
This weakness “leads to the Commission getting challenged on transparency because the journalists cannot do their job,” the official added.
In the firing line is the Commission’s “spokesperson’s service” ― known among journalists and officials as the SPP ― which runs the institution’s official media communications. It has a staff of about 80 people, including 12 spokespeople who ― unlike practically everyone else in the organization ― have the authority to speak on the record and be named. It reports directly to von der Leyen.
But the relationship between the SPP and journalists has started to sour.
“We’ve been complaining for months about being spoon-fed [sanitized press statements] and not having the real information, the legal documents, and about the Commission delaying information,” Dafydd ab Iago, president of the International Press Association, which represents hundreds of journalists working in Brussels, and EU correspondent for Argus Media, told POLITICO.
The SPP insisted that it remains committed to its mission of communicating about the work of the institution with the public via the press.
The service “takes the comments and the criticism very seriously,” said chief spokesperson Paula Pinho.
Ribera’s flight
One of the most striking recent examples of confused messaging ― as POLITICO reported on Monday ― concerned Commission competition chief Teresa Ribera who, on what was a big moment directly related to her job last month, did not hold a press conference to announce a landmark edict against U.S. tech firm Google.
With reporters nonplussed about why an important commissioner would miss such a prominent news event, the SPP told them that one of the reasons that Ribera ― who has emerged as a thorn in von der Leyen’s side over her views on Gaza ― was unable to do it was because she was catching an early flight. This turned out to be inaccurate. The SPP said it was acting in good faith.
Also in September, journalists complained when Commission spokespeople gave contradictory answers about whether the EU’s leadership believed that Russia had jammed the GPS navigation system on a plane carrying von der Leyen.
And in an example of the conflicting instructions given to journalists, the SPP last month invited them to a webinar on artificial intelligence, explaining in an email it was on “an off-the-record basis (no quoting by name, only ‘Commission official’),” only to then livestream the event and publish the webinar on YouTube.
In June, the SPP was slammed for backpedaling after announcing the Commission would kill a proposed bill to curb greenwashing.
Then in July, after the Commission presented its plan for the EU’s next seven-year budget, the International Press Association accused it of “an attempt to instrumentalize and confuse, delivering PR content with no possibility of verification.” The €2 trillion proposal wasn’t even accompanied by “a basic table of figures,” the association said in a statement. The Commission denied a lack of transparency.
Earlier this year, journalists covering EU politics widely criticized the SPP for concealing information about von der Leyen’s illness. At the time, Pinho was asked directly if the president was in hospital but she told reporters there was “no update” ― despite the fact that she had been hospitalized the day before. News of her stay broke a week later.
‘Things that cannot be immediately shared’
The SPP pushed back against the criticism. “It’s only natural that in an institution like the Commission … there are things that cannot be immediately shared,” said Pinho.
Journalists should understand how much effort spokespeople make to get them the information once it’s available, she said. “If there are changes up until the last minute, then we need to make sure those changes will be accurately reflected across all the press material and this can take time,” she said. “And the more so if we are talking about numbers.”
Among the seven officials interviewed by POLITICO for this article and who have direct knowledge of how the EU communications system operates, opinions differed over what’s gone wrong. One said spokespeople are failing to communicate with the press simply because the Commission’s leadership haven’t given them the information in the first place, while two pointed at dwindling resources ― last year, von der Leyen cut the number of spokespeople.Other officials said the main problem is that von der Leyen and the small team around her have a tight grip over how the service operates, creating bottlenecks and restricting how much the spokespeople are able to say.
“It’s not because the SPP doesn’t have the information internally, but because they have to wait for the president’s cabinet’s approval for any information-sharing ,” the first senior commission official quoted in this article said. “And their leadership is totally risk-averse.”
A second senior Commission official insisted von der Leyen was not attempting to hide information ― but they did acknowledge reporters’ frustration about lack of access via the SPP.
Pinho, meanwhile, said the structure of the Commission is precisely what makes communicating about the institution so complex. “If it was as centralized as many claim, then it would be much easier ― we would just need to consult the president’s cabinet on proposed lines and no one else,” she said.
“That would be very efficient, but that’s not the way it works,” she said. “All concerned commissioners have a say in their respective areas of competence.”
Complicating the press’s understanding of the issue is the arrival of a political appointee to advise von der Leyen on communication, who sits in the president’s team rather than the spokesperson’s service. Alexandra Henman, formerly deputy spokesperson of the center-right European People’s Party — von der Leyen’s political family — was brought into the role in June to replace Jens Flosdorff (who himself moved into the SPP). Three of the Commission officials interviewed for this story denied this put her at odds with the SPP ― something that other officials and journalists have said ― describing her role and that of the chief spokesperson as complementary.
A more ‘political’ Commission
The current structure of the spokesperson service finds its roots in Jean-Claude Juncker’s period as Commission president from 2014 to 2019. Under him, the spokesperson’s service was brought under tighter, top-down control and commissioners were told not to stray from the institution’s line. A political communications adviser was appointed to each commissioner’s cabinet.
At the time, then-chief spokesperson Margaritis Schinas implemented several structural reforms.
“Clearly the Commission was evolving into a political institution with fundamental changes on the tasks that we were asked to perform,” said Schinas, who also served as a vice president of the Commission during von der Leyen’s first term. The institution was “very eager to produce a bigger-picture view of our work.”
At its core, the reform transformed the SPP into an extension of the president’s cabinet, giving it much more control.
The relationship between journalists and public relations professionals at any organization is often choppy, given that it’s built on mutual dependency, friction and personal interactions. And it’s true that the past few decades have been littered with occasional instances of tension between the Commission and the reporters covering it.
But the latest trend is something new, observers said. “This phenomena of centralization of the communication reflects a deeper centralization of power which today I think is much easier to detect than 10 years ago,” said Alberto Alemmano, EU law and policy expert at HEC in Paris.
Schinas argued that a more presidential Commission was necessary if the EU wanted to become more nimble and ready to act.
“It’s inevitable that the center of gravity falls into the Berlaymont” ― the Commission’s Brussels headquarters, he said. “I fail to see what would be the alternative.”
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