Five more years for Ursula von der Leyen: Can EU Commission chief stay the course?

Talking Europe

Ursula von der Leyen has been as confirmed the head of the European Commission for a second five-year term. She won a comfortable majority on July 18th, with 401 MEPs voting for her at the plenary session in Strasbourg – forty votes more than she needed to get her over the line. That is a stark contrast to 2019, when she scraped through with just nine votes. But the balancing act that she had pull off, in order to bring different political families together, does not stop now. Indeed, in the next mandate, she will have to navigate a difficult political landscape, not just vis-à-vis the European parliament, but in the EU as a whole. We discuss what comes next, and what her big challenges are likely to be.