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HOWDY. It’s no surprise today that we’re reflecting on the State of the European Union speech by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Yet the announcement by the EU General Court, which came as the speech was ongoing, that it was largely backing the Commission’s €4.3 billion fine against Google is likely to reverberate equally if not more so inside — and especially outside — the bloc. A reminder that the EU’s real power is legal, not political.
“Think about this: We introduced legislation to screen foreign direct investment in our companies for security concerns. If we do that for our economy, shouldn’t we do the same for our values? This is why we will present a Defense of Democracy package. It will bring covert foreign influence and shady funding to light.”
— Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in her SOTEU address. Does this mean adding foreign governments to the Transparency Register, à la the U.S.’s Foreign Agents Registration Act? From a reporting perspective, we say: Please oh please let it be so.
RAPID RATINGS: EU Influence recruited comms gurus to send us an immediate, on-record critique of von der Leyen’s speech from a political strategy and messaging perspective. We specifically asked them not to weigh in on policy pronouncements. Our panelists:
— John Clancy, senior adviser, FTI Consulting
— Victoria Main, CEO, SEC Newgate EU
— Carola Schoor, program leader, Public Affairs at the Centre for Professional Learning of Leiden University
— Christian Skrivervik, head of press & communications, European Movement International
(SOT)EU AT WAR: “This was a state of war address,” said Clancy, specifically an “information war.” Von der Leyen’s announcement of plans to jet to Kyiv to talk single market with the Ukrainian president set up a contrast to the Putin-Xi summit in Uzbekistan, planned for the following day.
“The framing of the war as a fight of good against evil is a very sharp black/white opposition, breaking with the tradition of the EU of nuance and consensus,” said Schoor, a political philosopher and linguist whose 2020 PhD focused on political style.
Schoor observed von der Leyen reframing Europe as a more agile player in world affairs: “Fifteen years ago, during the financial crisis, it took us years to find lasting solutions. A decade later, when the global pandemic hit, it took us only weeks. But this year, as soon as Russian troops crossed the border into Ukraine, our response was united, determined and immediate,” the Commission chief said. (That section also invoked the rhetorical “rule of three.”)
VDL’S IMAGE: “Her performance was as slick and trilingual as ever,” said Main, noting (as did some other panelists) that “she – literally – nailed her colours to the Ukrainian mast,” on top of standing firm on sanctions and declaring “‘our union is not complete without you’” to Ukraine.
Schoor noticed that when von der Leyen used difficult language, she made hand gestures to the rhythm of the word. “This made her look like a schoolteacher teaching vocabulary, said Schoor, “which fits her image: She stands alone above the crowd, yet is involved.” WHAT WASN’T THERE: For Clancy, the speech was a “bid to move away from the traditional legislative shopping-list speech toward one that attempted to rally Europeans around its core democratic values.”
Yet that missing shopping list meant little talk of groceries. Von der Leyen “went some way towards addressing energy concerns, but offered no relief on food prices,” Main said.
THE REAL AUDIENCE: She wasn’t really talking to the average EU citizen, noted Skrivervik, whose organization just published a fresh round of polling on how the public sees the EU. (More on that below.)
Instead, he said, she’s doling out nuggets for others to use. She offered a range of soundbites on key issues “in a convincing way that can form a very good basis from which many stakeholders and news outlets can share positive insights on EU action,” Skrivervik said. “Strategically, I think this is the best option for impact, as for now, I doubt too many citizens are tuning in directly.”
BOTTOM LINE: Our panelists were divided on whether von der Leyen connected in this unprecedented moment. Clancy heard a speech “delivered with genuine passion” and “ anchored with proposed real-world actions.” Skrivervik said she “really came alive when talking about how our democracies, rule of law, and ways of life were the targets of Russian missiles.”
Main was less impressed: “It was much like previous speeches of its ilk — big on style and short on substance, with an authenticity deficit,” said Main. “But was it realistic to expect anything more, given the enormity of the challenges facing her?”
WANT MORE SUBSTANCE? Join POLITICO’s expert policy reporters this Friday at 10:00 am CEST during a POLITICO Pro briefing call, open to all our readers. Registration here.
WANT MORE VISUALS? Ursula von der Leyen’s State of the Union speech — in 5 charts
APÉRO ANECDOTE: I floated the idea of this virtual panel to someone from a big agency at a recent party. This person scoffed at the idea that their team would provide this expert insight without being paid for it. So, thanks again to John, Victoria, Carola and Christian for being so generous and classy. Hope it drives some business/funding your way.
STATE OF THE DISUNION: Von der Leyen on Wednesday quoted the late Parliament President David Sassoli: “Democracy has not gone out of fashion, but it must update itself in order to keep improving people’s lives.”
Blue and yellow might be high style inside Brussels, but values that seem so obvious from here are far from universal among EU citizens. That’s all laid out in figures from a massive survey published this week from European Movement International. The poll from nine countries measures things like blame for the Ukraine invasion, solidarity with other EU citizens and support for democracy overall.
The survey was mostly conducted in March — soon after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and before we really had to contemplate the impact of rising gas prices — so we’d predict that the unity is even more tenuous today.
Invasion’s legitimacy: In Hungary and Greece, 4 in 10 respondents said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was legitimate. That figure was 3 in 10 in France, Germany, Italy, Romania and even Poland.
EU solidarity: A majority of respondents in all nine countries agreed: “within the European Union, we need to do everything we can to help countries in need.” But but but, those in the two most powerful countries had the lowest rates of agreement: 57 percent in France and 58 percent in Germany.
Democratic deficit: The survey uses a set of five questions about norms and institutions to measure support for democracy — answering yes to all five equals consistent support. That consistent support is below 50 percent in all nine. Support has dropped recent years in most of the countries surveyed, most starkly in Germany, down by 18 percent since 2019 to 38 percent.
BACKGROUND ON THE SURVEY: EMI’s Listen to People survey was funded by the Eurasia Program of the Open Society Foundations, with samples of 500-600 per country, in March. (It was fielded in April in Hungary, after the elections.)
NGOS EXIT COMMISSION’S GREEN FINANCE ADVISORY BOARD: Environmental and consumer groups BEUC, Birdlife, ECOS, Transport & Environment and the WWF are leaving the EU Platform on Sustainable Finance, the NGOs announced Wednesday. ‘Ignored’: The Commission’s advisory platform is mandated to develop science-based recommendations for the EU’s list of green investments, known as the taxonomy. But the EU executive has interfered politically in the group’s work and “repeatedly ignored the expert group’s recommendations, particularly on forestry, bioenergy, gas-fired power and nuclear power, without providing any sound scientific justification for these decisions,” the groups argue.
Background: The advisory group has repeatedly hit out at the Commission, most notably for its decision to include nuclear and gas as transitional activities in the taxonomy.
The last straw: The European Parliament’s vote in favor of the Commission’s decision this summer accelerated a rethink among NGOs of their role in the platform, ultimately leading to their decision to leave. “We no longer believe this Commission will allow the Platform to work independently and with integrity so we cannot be part of this process any longer,” said Sebastien Godinot, senior economist at the WWF’s European Policy Office.
Show must go on: Nathan Fabian, the platform’s chair, told my colleague Antonia Zimmermann that the platform “is not a political institution with the final decision on criteria.” Essentially, these NGOs are just removing themselves from part of the discussion. Fabian added that “the market still needs a taxonomy for sustainable economic activities and companies and investors will continue implementing it.”
POLITICO — HUNGRY FOR THE STORY: It was hard liquor and light canapes at my employer’s party at the BelVUE Museum last week. Guests joked that it was all part of a crafty plan to get our VIP sources drunk and spill their secrets.
Folks, we just ain’t that strategic. In fact, POLITICO parties have a history of focusing more booze than food. I can still feel the pain I suffered at the All-Hands meeting the morning after our 2017 staff-only summer party, a bacchanal of craft cocktails and zero comestibles.
L’ENTENTE — FOMO RELIEF FOR ANGLOPHONES: Olivier Guersent, DG Comp’s director general, showed POLITICO’s coverage can have a real impact when he briefly switched to English during a speech to French lawyers’ association L’Entente. He may well have been reacting to our competition newsletter Fair Play, which reported that the group was now open to non-French speaking antitrust professionals — as long as they can stomach the champagne and charcuterie. M. Guersent is, bien sûr, a native French speaker who speaks excellent English and Dutch.
RUSSIAN PERM REP — DASVIDANIYA TO AN ERA: Make no mistake: Thursday’s farewell reception for Vladimir Chizhov, ending his 17-year assignment in Brussels, was well-attended, with people milling through several rooms of the embassy sipping wine and tucking into a generous and varied spread of Russian delicacies. (He’s joked that the Kremlin was taking his title as “permanent representative” literally.)
Your EU Influence author — who launched her now 17-week tenure this spring by interviewing Chizhov at the Russian embassy — admittedly was not well-prepared to cover this event. I was assigned to attend on just a few hours’ notice, using a paper invitation that arrived at POLITICO’s offices for a colleague not based in Brussels. The embassy let me crash when I appeared at the door even though I wasn’t even dressed properly, rocking trainers amid the business-formal crowd. (Thank goodness that Irish Left MEP Mick Wallace was there in sandals.) Nonexistent Russian language skills restricted the eavesdropping potential, but we did hear one attendee bond with another over being “here with all the rebels.” Also overheard: “The EU is famous for not being too concerned with the ordinary meaning of its own words.”
We missed Chizhov’s remarks, but according to a recap sent out by the embassy this morning, he noted the “the readiness of Russia … to work for the benefit of all the peoples of the continent in a constructive and mutually respectful manner.”
— Adeline Bouché is Belgium’s new delegate to the working party on the Middle East/Gulf. She was the perm rep’s Green Deal and digitalization coordinator.
— Aurelie Valtat heads from Malawi to Bosnia & Herzegovina for the European External Action Service, where she reports that the baklava is divine.
— Alessandra Viezzer is the EEAS’s new head of cooperation in Lebanon. She was previously the European Commission’s deputy head of unit for Western Balkans policy and regional strategy.
— Monika Zsigri is the Commission’s new head of unit for DG ENER‘s Energy platform task force, via Regional and Urban Policy.
— Lucas van Straalen starts at FleishmanHillard as a public affairs consultant in financial services.
— Eleni Maragkaki, the Greek Perm Rep’s attaché for consumer protection, IP, technical harmonization, is now seconded to the Commission’s Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA) as a national expert.
— Former European Health Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis has signed on as an ambassador for HIV Outcomes.
— Stuart Hurst, most recently of Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals, has joined Rud Pedersen’s Brussels office as senior advisor to the health care team.
— Luciana Nemeth joined FTI Consulting as a director, health care and life sciences, via the Global TB Caucus.
— Hélorie Duval started as project and communication officer at EU40 – the network of young MEPs.
— Antoine Pauty joins #SustainablePublicAffairs, from IFOAM Organics Europe.
THANKS TO: Antonia Zimmermann, Sarah-Taïssir Bencharif and Aoife White; web producer Ellen Boonen and my editor Nicholas Vinocur.
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