47
winner —thanks to a controversial back-
room deal that got her one of Europe’s
top jobs when she hadn’t even cam-
paigned for it. By then, she was such a
divisive figure at home that Germany
was the only E.U. member state to ab-
stain from the vote to nominate her.
She is reluctant to dwell on that pe-
riod. “You learn a lot where leadership
is concerned by not only being success-
ful, but also if things go wrong,” she says
simply. Though she’s the first woman to
serve as President of the Commission,
she says the world she now inhabits is
“much easier” than the defense min-
istry. Even so, she isn’t immune from
workplace sexism. Last year, video foot-
age went viral showing Charles Michel,
the president of the European Council,
and Turkish President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan taking two chairs laid out at a
summit, while von der Leyen was left
standing, her discomfort clear. She later
made an impassioned speech calling out
the sexist implications of the “Sofagate”
incident. “It is a situation that women
face a zillion times silently,” she tells me.
She learned to deal with these “small hu-
miliations,” in part by watching Merkel
cope with intense misogyny over the
years: “She was always better in the
topic; she always knew more. And later
on, nobody questioned her.”
It’s a strategy von der Leyen deploys
now. She seems preternaturally calm, no
matter how tough things get around her.
(Resorting to national stereotypes, Brit-
ish media have even called her a “Ger-
man ice queen.”) She credits age, but
also knowledge and experience. The
more she reads—on vaccine production,
on energy, on export controls—the eas-
ier it is to be confident of her position.
“Being calm does not come as a gift. It
comes with hard work.”
EvEn bEforE taking officE, von
der Leyen knew hard work would be
needed to transform the E.U. What she
proposed back in September 2019 was
a new “geopolitical Commission”—a
stronger E.U. that would be more asser-
tive on the international stage, includ-
ing leading on the climate crisis and
expanding its security role. The chal-
lenge is that the E.U. is fundamentally
a rules-based organization , which makes
it less nimble for the kind of geopolitical
maneuvering von der Leyen might en-
vision. The clearest example is her lat-
est push to fast-track Ukraine into the
E.U., which she has framed as a moral
duty. During her April visit to Ukraine,
she declared: “Ukraine belongs in the
European family.” Yet the way the bloc
is set up means the process will almost
certainly take years.
Experts say that after a few stumbles
during the pandemic—including over
a slow COVID-19 vaccine rollout—von
der Leyen has emerged as a leader adept
at judging what Europe needs in a given
moment. “She’s much more comfortable
in this multilateral atmosphere,” says
William Drozdiak, an expert in Euro-
pean affairs at the Wilson Center and
author of the 2017 book Fractured Con-
tinent: Europe’s Crises and the Fate of the
West. “She recognizes the limits of the
role and is playing it very effectively.”
Those limits are that her job is often
as much about having a bold vision as it
is about being flexible enough to reach
a compromise—something she tells me
she loves. “I am only powerful as long as
I create majorities. That’s the humbling
△
On April 8, von der Leyen became
the first Western leader to travel to
Bucha, the site of Russian atrocities
EFREM LUKATSKY—AP
