From Political to Geopolitical? A First Appraisal of the Von Der Leyen Commission’s Narrative and Organization

The hybrid nature of the Commission - combining politics and bureaucracy - is well established, at least since David Coombes’s study of the institution (1970). Yet, recent works focusing on Juncker Commission concluded that it marked a departure from previous ones, with a clear and open emphasis on the “political” dimension (Kassim and Laffan 2019; Nugent and Rhinard 2019; Christiansen 2016). Indeed, building on the legitimacy vested in him by the process of spitzenkandidaten (which triggered an open contest for the Presidency of the Commission), Juncker bluntly assumed that his Commission was going to be a very political Commission, idea that he repeatedly conveyed during his term in office. The rejection of the process of spitzenkandidaten in 2019, prevented the new President of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, from claiming the same legitimacy (derived from a personal policy mandate), but not from continuing the political road by labelling her Commission “geopolitical”. Considering that Juncker’s emphasis on the “political Commission” framed the (re)organization, working methods and policy proposals of the institution, I’m interested to see whether the notion of “geopolitical Commission” frames the new Commission’s programme and organization. The goal of the paper is to answer one chief question: How (geo)political is the new von der Leyen Commission?