Ursula von der Leyen

Ursula von der Leyen (born October 8, 1958, Brussels, Belgium) is a Belgian-born German politician who is the first woman to serve as Germany’s minister of defense (2013–19). In July 2019 she became the first woman to be elected president of the European Commission.

Early life and education

Ursula was the daughter of German politician Ernst Albrecht, who had served as chief of cabinet at the Commission of the European Economic Community. She studied economics (1977–80) at the Universities of Göttingen and Münster as well as at the London School of Economics but never graduated. Instead, she went into medicine and graduated (1987) from Hanover (Germany) Medical School (MHH). She worked as an assistant physician (1988–92) at the MHH’s gynecological clinic and in 1991 was awarded a doctorate in medicine. She lived (1992–96) in the United States while her husband, Heiko von der Leyen, was on the faculty at Stanford University. After her return to Germany, she served as a faculty member (1998–2002) at the MHH’s department of epidemiology, social medicine, and health systems research. In addition, she earned a master’s degree (2001) in public health.

Ursula von der Leyen, who had joined the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in 1990, became involved in 1996 in the politics of Lower Saxony—the federal state her father had governed (1976–90). She held a series of local and state offices prior to her election in 2004 as a member of the CDU’s leadership committee. After the CDU won the federal elections in 2005, she was appointed minister of family affairs, senior citizens, women, and youth in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s first cabinet. Among von der Leyen’s measures to address Germany’s low birth rate were the implementation of paid parental leave from work following the birth of a child and a massive expansion of child care facilities. In 2009 she was elected a member of the Bundestag (parliament) and became minister of labour and social affairs. While she held that post, the ongoing financial crisis compelled her to make cuts to welfare spending. In late 2010 von der Leyen was elected deputy chairman of the CDU.

Tenure as defense minister

In December 2013 von der Leyen—seen by some as a possible successor to Merkel—became the first woman to hold the defense portfolio. In that post she endeavoured to reform the Bundeswehr (federal armed forces) while dealing with a number of challenges. In March 2014 Crimea, which was part of Ukraine, was annexed by Russia. The crisis sparked new concerns about NATO’s capabilities, especially after an independent review of Germany’s defense ministry, released in October 2014, uncovered scores of “problems and risks” in its procurement process. Doubts that the country could fulfill its military commitment to NATO, owing to a lack of battle-ready equipment, led some allies to pressure Germany to increase its military spending.

Von der Leyen publicly called for her country to assume a greater role in Europe’s defense, and she later helped secure funds for military equipment. Another crisis developed in 2015 as a wave of refugees arrived in Europe, with many seeking asylum in Germany. The situation strained resources and led to anti-immigration efforts. Von der Leyen urged restraint, arguing that it was a mistake to equate refugees with terrorists. Her position, however, drew increasing pushback following terrorist attacks in Paris (2015) and Brussels (2016).

In February 2018 a survey of German military equipment found that only a fraction of key weapons systems were combat ready. Fewer than one-third of Germany’s combat aircraft, fewer than half of its tanks, and just three of its heavy transport aircraft were available for deployment. Von der Leyen reacted to the findings by saying that it would take time to make up for decades of spending shortfalls, and Merkel’s government committed to a significant increase in its defense budget. The defense spending target of 1.5 percent of GDP by 2024 remained short of the 2.0 percent agreed upon by NATO leaders in 2014, however, and the Bundeswehr struggled to reach expanded manpower goals. Von der Leyen proposed extending recruiting efforts to foreign European Union (EU) nationals who had been long-term residents of Germany, but other EU leaders expressed concerns about how such efforts might affect their own military readiness.

Road to the European Commission presidency

In October 2018, after a poor showing by the CDU in regional elections, Merkel announced that she would not seek another term as party leader. Von der Leyen declined to campaign for the position, which was eventually filled by Merkel protégé Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer. That von der Leyen, who had once been regarded as Merkel’s heir apparent, did not even present herself as a candidate was seen by some as evidence that the defense portfolio continued to be a poisoned chalice. With her domestic political career apparently stalled and parliament probing irregularities and possible nepotism within the defense department procurement process, von der Leyen’s deliverance would come from an unexpected source.

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The term of European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker was scheduled to end in November 2019, and his replacement was to be selected by the European Council—the heads of government of the 28 member countries of the EU. Final approval would rest with the European Parliament, but that process was complicated by the results of elections in May 2019, which saw the centrist ruling coalition lose its long-held majority. When closed-door negotiations began in June 2019, EU leaders struggled to find a compromise candidate who would be acceptable to the centre-right and centre-left blocs while garnering support from enough Green, liberal, and Euroskeptic members of the European Parliament to win confirmation.

After a fruitless summit resulted in little more than the elimination of the three leading candidates, European Council Pres. Donald Tusk shepherded a package deal that filled the EU’s top roles with a quartet of western Europeans. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel was nominated to succeed Tusk, Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Borrell was tapped to inherit the foreign policy portfolio from Federica Mogherini, and International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde was selected to follow Mario Draghi at the head of the European Central Bank. Most surprising, however, was the nomination of von der Leyen to succeed Juncker as president of the European Commission. Although she was the daughter of an esteemed European Community official, von der Leyen herself was seen as something of an outsider to the Brussels establishment, and, despite the fact that she had received the endorsement of the centrist and liberal parliamentary blocs, there remained doubts about the likelihood of her confirmation.

On July 16, 2019, von der Leyen was narrowly confirmed, receiving 383 of 747 votes (with 374 needed). The following day she resigned as Germany’s defense minister and was succeeded by Kramp-Karrenbauer. Von der Leyen was due to replace Juncker on November 1, but disagreements over the makeup of her cabinet delayed the transfer of power by one month. On December 1 she became the first woman to serve as president of the European Commission.

Presidency of the European Commission

Von der Leyen’s initial priorities included addressing gender equality within the EU and tackling the climate crisis with a program dubbed the European Green Deal. Within months of taking office, however, von der Leyen’s administration was forced to confront the greatest threat to public health in a century. The coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 pandemic caused death and disruption around the world, and countries across the EU reintroduced border controls in an effort to stop the spread of COVID-19, the potentially deadly disease caused by SARS-CoV-2. Businesses were closed, schools were shuttered, and lockdowns were imposed in an attempt to check the rapidly mutating virus. The financial and human cost of the pandemic was enormous; the EU economy contracted by more than 6 percent, and hundreds of thousands perished as a result of the disease. Governments raced to develop and distribute an effective vaccine, and by the end of 2021 nearly three-fourths of EU citizens had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

Von der Leyen had played a personal role in securing those vaccines from Pfizer after an agreement with AstraZeneca fell through due to supply issues, but the specifics of that deal later came under scrutiny. The EU’s official watchdog group formally reprimanded the European Commission for failing to produce text messages between von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla in response to a freedom of information request. The European Public Prosecutor’s Office later opened an official investigation into the vaccine purchase.

The World Health Organization estimated that by 2022 COVID-19 had directly or indirectly claimed more than three million lives in Europe. The threat of the virus had just begun to recede when a new danger emerged on the EU’s eastern border. In late 2021 Russia began a massive buildup of troops in western Russia, the Russian-occupied Ukrainian autonomous republic of Crimea, Belarus, and the Russian-backed separatist enclave of Transdniestria in Moldova. In January and February 2022 leaders of EU governments shuttled between Moscow and Kyiv in an attempt to head off what appeared to be an inevitable Russian invasion of Ukraine, and von der Leyen announced that the EU had begun weaning itself from Russian gas exports.

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On February 24, 2022, the largest European conflict since World War II began when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Russian troops attacking from Belarus attempted a direct advance on Kyiv, but they were checked by a robust Ukrainian defense. Working with other Western leaders, von der Leyen ushered through a sweeping sanctions package that targeted a broad range of Russian businesses, industries, and individuals. She also pledged €500 million in direct military aid to Ukraine; von der Leyen acknowledged the significance of this move at a press conference on February 27, saying, “For the first time ever, the European Union will finance the purchase and delivery of weapons and other equipment to a country that is under attack.” In April 2022 von der Leyen made the first of several trips to Kyiv to meet with Ukrainian Pres. Volodymyr Zelensky. During that visit, she stated that “Ukraine belongs in the European family,” and she personally delivered paperwork that would formalize Ukraine’s intention to join the European Union. Von der Leyen ensured that the process was expedited, and Ukraine was granted EU candidate status on June 23.

In August 2022 Russia retaliated against the EU by slashing gas supplies to Europe, causing energy prices to skyrocket. Von der Leyen, who had warned that Russia would attempt to weaponize energy in an attempt to drive a wedge between Ukraine and the EU, pledged to reform Europe’s energy markets and pivot away from Russian gas. By year’s end, von der Leyen had negotiated a gas price cap for the EU’s 27 member countries, and in January 2023 European natural gas prices were lower than they had been when Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine.