The accidental empress of Europe who should have never been by Thanos Kalamidas

By all appearances, Ursula von der Leyen was never meant to become the Empress of Brussels. And yet, here we are, watching as the unelected head of the European Commission sleepwalks through crises, genuflects at the altar of American military contractors, and chisels away at the foundations of the European welfare state, all while wearing a self-satisfied smirk and NATO’s gold star like a brooch on her tailored jacket.

One could write a tragicomic opera about how Ursula von der Leyen became the most powerful unelected bureaucrat in Europe, catapulted into the Commission presidency in 2019 through a backroom deal that defied the Spitzenkandidat democratic process. She had just come off a spectacularly embarrassing stint as Germany’s Defence Minister, where her legacy included procurement scandals, a broken Bundeswehr, and enough nepotism to make a Balkan warlord blush. But Brussels has never met a failed minister it couldn’t promote, and Ursula fit the mold of pliable technocrat perfectly.

What followed has been a string of catastrophic missteps, dressed up in euro-jargon and crisis-summits. Her performance during the COVID-19 vaccine rollout was disjointed at best, late, disorganized, and overpromised. She blundered into photo-ops while countries scrambled for doses. Her fingerprints were all over the vaccine contracts scandal, including those curious text messages exchanged with Pfizer’s CEO, texts which mysteriously vanished faster than a Luxembourg tax file.

And now, with the Iran-Israel conflict threatening to ignite the Middle East and drag the West into yet another oil-and-ash inferno, von der Leyen managed to turn diplomacy into a farce. She raced to Tel Aviv to offer “unconditional” support without so much as consulting the Council or Parliament. No mandate, no shame. Just her own geopolitical theatre, undermining European diplomacy and alienating half the planet in one fell swoop. Where Josep Borrell called for de-escalation and restraint, von der Leyen served hawkish rhetoric on a silver platter. European credibility? Derailed.

But her failure doesn’t stop at foreign affairs. At the recent NATO meeting, one might have mistaken her for Donald Trump’s PR manager. While Europe crumbles under austerity’s latest reincarnation, von der Leyen cheerfully sells European sovereignty to Washington’s arms dealers. Her Commission's obsession with militarization, under the guise of “strategic autonomy,” is little more than a parade of subsidies for American weapons manufacturers. Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, they're not just watching from across the Atlantic, they're cashing in on every Ursula-approved “solidarity” package.

In truth, her policies read like the fever dreams of a neoliberal lobbyist: a fire sale of European welfare structures, all in the name of “resilience” and “green transition.” Never mind that these so-called transitions are increasingly outsourced to private American firms or filtered through opaque Commission-led public-private partnerships. The European people are promised growth; what they receive is austerity with a sustainability sticker.

Meanwhile, public trust in the European project is circling the drain. Rising living costs, stagnant wages, and a housing crisis are met not with support but with lectures about “fiscal responsibility” and “defence readiness.” The only readiness von der Leyen seems interested in is for conflict, economic or military, so long as it benefits Washington and the corporations circling Brussels like vultures at a buffet.

Is Ursula von der Leyen corrupt? Perhaps not in the brown-envelope sense. But corruption takes many forms. There is corruption of purpose, when one forgets who they serve. There is corruption of priorities, when public money is funnelled toward private gain under the guise of policy. And there is the deepest corruption of all: when a leader no longer even pretends to listen to the people she represents.

It is now beyond debate: Ursula von der Leyen no longer works for the European people. If she ever did, it was lost somewhere between a NATO gala dinner and a Pfizer cocktail hour. The time has come not for polite murmurs of discontent but for real institutional reckoning.

Europe deserves accountability. Europe deserves leadership rooted in its citizens, not in backroom deals and Pentagon whispers. Europe deserves someone who does not mistake military budgets for social cohesion or geopolitical bluster for unity.

Impeachment mechanisms in Brussels may be buried under legal procedure and political inertia, but they exist. And if ever there was a time to exhume them from the archives, it is now. Failing that, we should demand that von der Leyen resign or be shown the door, before she inflicts more long-term damage.

Let her return to Hannover or wherever her next lobbyist-funded speaking tour takes her. Let her write memoirs about “leading through crisis” and give TED Talks to crowds who mistake confidence for competence.

But do not, under any circumstances, let her lead Europe again.

Not one step further. Stop her NOW!