Backtracking on climate action, foreign affairs failures and an agenda of deregulation leave the Commission President with a solid F grade for her first 100 days in office.

To say The Left is so far unimpressed with the President of the European Commission’s first 100 days in office would be the understatement of the year. Von der Leyen’s second mandate has been marked by an unprecedented rollback of legislation she authored in the last mandate, to the detriment of people and planet. 

The Left has issued the following report card for VDL’s first 100 days of her second mandate: 

Climate Action: F

The European Green Deal is dead, long live the Clean Industrial Deal! This is the battle cry from the office of the President of the European Commission these days. 

It must have been a disheartening 100 days for all those Commission workers who spent the last mandate drafting legislation, ‘action plans’ and ‘roadmaps’ to guide Europe to climate neutrality, only for the Commission President to do a full U-turn this mandate and decide that it is time for environmental deregulation and climate backtracking. Large corporations and multinationals will be happy with the Commission’s decision to drop corporate sustainability reporting rules, as well as her unbridled enthusiasm for free trade agreements that serve to undermine European farmers and accelerate deforestation. 

The Commission President has decided that the fight against climate change must take a back seat. She scores an F.

Transparency: F

Prior to taking up her second mandate, President von der Leyen’s record for transparency was already poor. The President had kept communications with large pharmaceutical companies from the public eye, she entrenched opaque hiring practices in the European Commission, and this pattern of intransparency has continued into her second mandate. 

In January the Commission President was hospitalised, though her office insisted at the time that von der Leyen was “keeping the business running” from home. Meanwhile the EU Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly reported that the Commission’s penchant for secrecy had only gotten worse over time as unelected ‘consiglieri’ ran the President’s cabinet with little to no scrutiny.

The Commission President scores an F for her top-down autocratic style of governance.

Migration: F

The European Union’s approach to refugees and migrants continues to harden and von der Leyen’s position has increasingly mirrored that of the far right, with the failed models of externalisation and ‘return hubs’ continuously touted as solutions to an exaggerated crisis. 

Member States with increasingly right-wing governments have pushed for the EU to go beyond the already extreme measures of the Migration & Asylum Pact and so far the Commission President has only been happy to oblige them. In January, the Commission crossed a new line, giving the greenlight to extraordinary measures to suspend or delay asylum applications and effectively endorsing pushbacks. Criminalisation of the most vulnerable people on earth will not resolve Europe’s systemic problems. Now the threat of the failed ‘return hub’ model will only exacerbate the situation. 

As ‘fortress Europe’ intensifies, migrants and refugees will suffer in camps in Libya and on Europe’s external borders, while increasingly harsh and dehumanising rhetoric from the President’s office will only drive people into the arms of racist far right political parties.  It’s an F from us. 

Workers’ Rights: F 

‘Competitiveness’ has been the President’s watchword for the past 100 days, but it is clear that she does not intend this to include competitive wages for workers. Instead the competitiveness craze has been a complete capitulation to big business lobbies and the demands of the President’s own EPP group who want to see weaker working conditions, lower wages and more of the same failed model of neoliberal capitalism that has eaten away at our public services for decades. 

Most recently, the Commission’s new ‘industrial Action Plan for the European automotive sector’ presents little more than a corporate subsidy plan that presents little substance for workers and their families facing factory closures and outsourcing. 

Worker’s will be worse off as a result of the European Commission’s policies this time around. F.

Security: F

While oligarchs to the East and the West cosy up to each other, Europe’s democratic institutions are being hollowed out and undermined at every turn. Far-right parties backed by Washington and Moscow alike are coming to power, yet the only response VDL has found has been to funnel public funds into American and European weapons manufacturers, who have seen their shares skyrocket in recent weeks. While these companies thrive and exports to authoritarian regimes expand, global peace and stability will suffer.   

European security is being eroded on the battlefield and at the ballot box. The Commission President’s approach will not bring victory in either camp. F.