European Union grandees are scheming to reappoint the very leaders that voters rebuffed.
The European Union Refuses to Save Itself
Less than a month ago, Europe got a shock when voters in European Parliament elections turned to parties of the right (some of them newish or insurgent protest parties) to send a message about their exasperation.
Now in a characteristic non sequitur, European Union grandees are scheming to reappoint the very leaders that voters rebuffed.
At issue is the fate of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. The commission is the EU’s powerful bureaucratic apparatus.
From their gleaming offices in Brussels, the president, an unwieldy cabinet of 26 other commissioners and their army of apparatchiks write first drafts of legislation and regulations, enforce antitrust laws and scold national governments over EU budget rules.
An irony is that these right-wing parties are no longer anti-EU in the way they once were, because they’ve discovered that’s not a majority position among the European public.
Think of them instead as “better-EU” movements in that they represent voters’ demands that the EU become more effective on matters such as immigration and less interfering and economically destructive on issues such as climate—and more responsive to voters, period.
Joseph C. Sternberg Wall Street Journal 5 July 2024
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