From the 13th floor of the European Commission’s sprawling headquarters in Brussels, President Ursula von der Leyen has fought to push and prod the world’s largest trading bloc forward, but those efforts are now in jeopardy.
As pressure grows on the European Union from the outside, another sign of trouble recently hit close to home. Circulating the 1960s office complex was a polling map that indicated support for the bloc is faltering in her native Germany, part of a broader backlash against the power amassing in Brussels.
The 65-year-old came to Brussels five years ago with a plan to make the EU a proper geopolitical player. The COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine accelerated the agenda, and in centralizing authority, she upset senior officials and opened a line of attack for populists set on weakening the bloc from the inside.