The bloc’s heavy-handed president has no strategic vision and fails to stand up to the US, Nicolas Schmit has said
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Nicolas Schmit, Brussels, Belgium, February 5, 2020. © Thierry Monasse / picture alliance via Getty Images
[RT] European
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen runs a system that silences
those working under her, a former commissioner who served during her
first term has claimed.
Nicolas Schmit, who represented Luxembourg
as the commissioner for jobs and social rights from 2019 to 2024, has
joined several former members of the European Commission to criticize
von der Leyen’s leadership.
“I have the impression that commissioners are now largely silenced,” Schmit told Politico in an interview published Monday. “The system, how the College is organized – very centralized, call it presidential or whatever system – is not good for the College, it’s not good for the Commission, and it is not good for Europe in general.”
He said the EU under von der Leyen has failed to have “a real strategic debate on Europe in the world, which was already a different world from the one we knew before” and lacks a “real strategy” to navigate it.
Schmit also accused the EU leadership of being reluctant to confront
US President Donald Trump, particularly after his administration
sanctioned former Commissioner Thierry Breton for allegedly
championing the censorship of US social media in Europe. He stressed
that the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) was approved by the entire
commission, not Breton alone.
After leaving the commission in 2024, Breton said some Brussels media have portrayed von der Leyen as “the Empress of Europe” due to her centralized power, noting that the bloc was not built for such a type of governance.
Schmit
was the Party of European Socialists’ lead candidate in the 2024 EU
election. Luxembourg declined to renominate him for commissioner,
choosing Christophe Hansen from von der Leyen’s European People’s Party
instead.
During her second term, von der Leyen defeated four
attempts by smaller-party MEPs to oust her, accusing critics of being
Russian agents. She is a vocal advocate for continued confrontation with
Moscow.