Ursula von der Leyen 'concerned' over Polish court ruling
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The EU Commission President has been in office for two years but she has failed to impress FDP MEP Moritz Korner, a member of the traffic light rounds of negotiations for the new German government. Writing in FOCUS online, the German politician accused Mrs von der Leyen of taking the EU parliament and the public for “fools”.
He said that he “regrets” voting for the former German defence minister two years ago for the position of head of the EU executive.
Mr Korner wrote: “I regret having voted for her. She was an emergency solution by the heads of state and government, not a preferred candidate of the European Parliament.
“Confronted with Trump’s tariff rage, Europe-wide climate demonstrations and Great Britain’s exit from the EU, however, months of inability on the part of the EU Commission to act were not a responsible alternative.
“Ultimately, I was won over by von der Leyen’s application speech.
“Her announcements were promising, and I bought her new start as a thoroughbred European and as someone returning home to Brussels.
“She wanted to give the European Parliament a right of initiative for new laws, upgrade the EU to a geopolitical player alongside China and the USA, and not make any compromises when defending the rule of law in the EU.
“From today’s perspective, it is clear: they were empty promises, nothing more than rehearsed PR phrases.
“In retrospect, aspiration and reality were miles apart.
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“Von der Leyen remained a master of announcements: more hype than substance.”
The German MEP continued by harshly criticising Mrs von der Leyen’s handling of the vaccine procurement during the coronavirus crisis.
He accused the Commission leader of prioritising vaccine costs negotiations over the urgent need for more doses of jabs to be readily available for European citizens.
He added: “Even before the Corona crisis, von der Leyen’s promise to automatically propose the European Parliament’s ideas as legislative initiatives has proven to be a sham.
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“As revealed by the media, the right of initiative, which she publicly articulated and advertised in the plenary, was clearly downgraded within the commission just a few weeks later.
“Instead of wanting to automatically propose legally compliant parliamentary demands as laws, the Commission has only committed itself in its internal regulations to wanting to examine the parliamentary demands in a non-binding manner.
“This can be dismissed as a typical politician lie.
“But the meaning of this fraud goes deeper. The top candidates were presented to the voters in the European elections, but then von der Leyen, who did not run, was given the lead.”
Calling for the end of her tenure as EU Commission President by 2020 “at the latest”, he concluded: “As the President of the Commission, she obviously does not want to be the guardian of the treaties, but rather the nation-state pacifier.
“She does not see herself as the political leader of Europe, but as the EU minister of the 27 heads of government, as the loyal assistant that French President Emmanuel Macron and Merkel as well as Orbán and Kaczyński saw in her from the start.
“She is not a lobbyist for the citizens, but the embodiment of anticipatory obedience. We don’t need such an EU leader. This needs to be over by 2024 at the latest.”
Additional reporting by Monika Pallenberg
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