There is a curious, almost rhythmic tic in the political life of the European Union. History marches forward, crises break like thunderstorms and yet Brussels appears wide-eyed with shock every single time. One could almost believe the EU is a perpetual amnesiac, constantly startled by the world outside its mahogany-lined conference rooms. For three decades, this cycle has repeated with the reliability of a metronome. But in recent years, the face of this habitual bewilderment has increasingly become that of a single figure, Ursula von der Leyen.
To be fair the Union’s short-sightedness did not begin with her. The European project has long suffered from a clogged peripheral vision. From sudden economic tremors to geopolitical quakes, the Union has shown an uncanny knack for waking up only after the roof has fallen in. It reacts; it flutters into emergency summits; it produces reams of dense prose. But foresight, the ability to smell the rain before the clouds gather, has remained a foreign tongue.
Over the last thirty years, the list of "unforeseen" disasters has grown embarrassingly long. Economic jitters that exposed a hollowed-out chest, security threats that revealed a profoundly relaxed posture and energy dependencies that were ignored until they became a chokehold. Each time, the same ritual followed, solemn faces, vows of "lessons learned" and a pinky-promise that Europe would never again be caught in its pyjamas.
And yet, here we are. What has shifted recently is that Europe’s political nervous system has become more centralised in tone. The Presidency of the European Commission has outgrown its clerk-like origins, evolving into a role that sets the Union’s pulse and projects its voice to the world. Consequently, the occupant of that office carries not just a ceremonial sceptre but a heavy rucksack of political accountability.
This brings us back to von der Leyen. Her tenure has been a marathon of fire-fighting; pandemics, geopolitical lightning strikes and a global order shifting beneath her feet. Some of these jolts were unavoidable, certainly. But a leader is not judged merely by how quickly they grab a bucket; they are judged by whether they made the building fireproof in the first place.
Too often, the European response has felt like frantic improvisation rather than a rehearsed symphony. Strategic dependencies, which analysts had shouted about for years, were allowed to fester. Institutional muscles remained slow and stiff. Policy fixes frequently arrived just as the patient was being wheeled into intensive care. When the dust finally settled, Brussels spoke with unearned bravado about "resilience" but the uncomfortable truth remained, resilience is merely the ability to take a punch; readiness is the ability to duck.
Critics across the political spectrum are now asking a stinging question, how can a Union of 450 million people possessed of such vast wealth and intellect, be so consistently blindsided by the bleeding obvious?
Part of the answer lies in the EU’s very DNA, which prioritises a slow, polite consensus over the undignified haste of clear action. Another part lies in its personality, a preference for the safety of a balanced sentence over the risk of a decisive stride.
But leadership is the Union’s heartbeat. The person atop the Commission is tasked with dragging the system forward, not merely tending to its inertia. When the same stumbles recur, when the red lights are ignored and the cupboards are found bare, responsibility cannot be evaporated into a mist of committees and councils.
Europe today faces a world far more predatory than the one it inhabited thirty years ago. The competition is sharper, the threats are breathing down its neck, and old friendships are fraying. In such a climate, complacency is a luxury the continent’s bank account can no longer support.
If the European Union wishes to stop being the victim of history, it must demand a different character from its leadership, it needs sharp eyes, a thick skin and the courage to act before a crisis forces its hand. Otherwise, Europe will continue its most exhausting tradition, learning the same hard lesson, over and over, only after the schoolhouse has burned down.
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