Andreas Kluth, Columnist

Ursula von der Leyen, the EU’s Centripetal Force

The new commission president is full of ideas. But above all, she just wants to hold the European family together.

January 2, 2020 at 6:00 AM UTC

Andreas Kluth is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering US diplomacy, national security and geopolitics. Previously, he was editor-in-chief of Handelsblatt Global and a writer for the Economist.

Atmosphere matters.
Photographer: Francois Lenoir/AFP

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Centrifugal or centripetal, which force will prevail in the European Union in 2020? A lot suggests it’ll be the former, with the EU drifting apart. Its third-biggest member state is preparing to exit. Populists are railing against Brussels and want their “sovereignty” back. Conservatives in the north balk at deeper integration of the euro area.

One woman who wants to nudge the EU in the opposite direction is Ursula von der Leyen, the new president of the European Commission. The EU needs “a centripetal force, coming again and again as the uniter,” she once told me, when she was still defense minister of Germany.