A former European Commissioner attacks Ursula von der Leyen: Her leadership style “is not good for Europe”

The head of the Brussels executive is accused, not for the first time, of promoting a centralized leadership style, writes Politico.

The “presidential” way in which Ursula von der Leyen runs the European Commission is not good for Europe, said Nicolas Schmit, former Commissioner for Jobs and Social Rights in the first von der Leyen Commission, in an interview with Politico.

“I feel like the commissioners are now generally being silenced,” Schmit said.

“The system, the way the College is organized – very centralized, we can call it presidential – is not good for the College, it is not good for the Commission and it is not good for Europe in general,” he said.

Who is Schmitt?

Schmit represented Luxembourg in the Commission between 2019 and 2024 and was the candidate of the Party of European Socialists in the 2024 European elections.

Socialists had hoped he could stay on for a second term in the Commission, but the Luxembourg government instead nominated Christophe Hansen of von der Leyen's centre-right European People's Party.

Schmit is now the president of the Foundation for European Progressive Studies, the PES think-tank.

While it is unusual for sitting commissioners to openly criticize von der Leyen, several former members of the College have done so.

Michel Barnier used his memoirs to accuse his former boss of presiding over an “authoritarian drift” within the Commission. Another former commissioner, Thierry Breton, also claimed that von der Leyen wielded too much power, arguing that Europe was “not built to have an empress or an emperor”.

An older critic of von der Leyen

As commissioner, Schmit was part of a faction that internally challenged some of von der Leyen's measures, including the appointment of a close ally as emissary for small businesses – a move criticized by the European Parliament for a lack of transparency.

He also accused the Commission of lacking a long-term vision and strategic planning.

“Did we have a real strategic debate about Europe in the world, which was already a different world from the one we knew before? We didn't have a real strategic approach, a real strategy,” he said, referring to von der Leyen's first term.

On relations with the US, Schmit criticized the Commission for not publicly defending former commissioner Breton, who was banned from travel by Washington over his efforts to regulate US social media and tech giants.

Schmit said the laws that displease the US – the regulation of digital services and digital markets – were passed by all 27 commissioners, including von der Leyen, and not just Breton.

“This is the time when we should have shown more solidarity and said 'no, it's not just one, it's all of us'. But, you know, courage is not always shared, including in the political sphere,” he said.

Schmit also criticized the Commission's deregulatory efforts, which aim to cut red tape in areas such as technology and environmental policy through so-called omnibus packages.

Other centre-left figures echoed this criticism. Iratxe García, the leader of the Socialists and Democrats group in Parliament, compared the deregulation efforts to Donald Trump's strategy.