Kallas’ collapse makes von der Leyen ever stronger. Even if a “cabinet of war” is needed

Kaja Kallas, the former Estonian prime minister turned EU High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy, seems to have already closed her cycle, just four months into her appointment. Her last outing on a new 40 billion fund for Ukraine, then reduced to 5 and then again reduced to zero, seems to have been the final straw for her work here in Brussels.

She has made mistakes from the very beginning, apparently not listening to the more experienced officials on how to do that job in the External Service of which she is head, and in fact, alienating several of them; she has had competencies de facto snatched away from the Commission from the start; she has not been able to create a staff up to the complicated role she has to play. “She acts as if she were still the Estonian prime minister, comes up with an idea and proposes it to the states without going through the main box of the Union’s policy, which is the search for consensus,” explained one senior official, who has worked “in the field” for years. And consensus she does not find.

It is a pity that a decidedly important box in the European institutions is, in fact, empty, although there is still time to learn and build credibility.

Perhaps it would be more correct to say that “there would be time” if, on the other side of the street, did not work someone like Ursula von der Leyen, who, on the other hand, understood everything about European politics and enriched it with something that was missing: centralisation. During her first term, there had already been many accusations of wanting to control and direct the work of each commissioner, accompanied by her choice to surround herself with a small “magic circle” of loyalists, who decided everything and were, for many, unreachable.

In forming her second Commission, von der Leyen has done the masterpiece: practically none of her 26 colleagues have a political stature comparable to hers; they are almost all second-rate figures, unknown to most, with mediocre resumes. She, therefore, towers and centralises at the highest level, particularly in foreign policy. She appointed a commissioner for Defense, which would be a Kallas competence, without anyone lifting a finger; she created a Directorate General for the Mediterranean that ranges all the way to the Persian Gulf (at the head of which she put one of the best foreign policy experts in the Union, Stefano Sannino) and which, clearly, will not only deal with fishing problems or the development of relations with Morocco. Then Kallas puts her spin on it (and von der Leyen knew full well what she was made of well before her appointment in Brussels), and that’s it.

There would also be Antonio Costa, the president of the European Council, who might have some say in the matter. However, the seasoned Portuguese politician does not seem to want to compete with the German. For now, he seems to be studying the situation and possibilities, has made no mistakes, but has not yet made his specific weight felt.

In short, von der Leyen has already created a kind of “cabinet of war,” maximising control over the executive and centralising several powers, breaking up those of others. Should things go wrong with Russia, the line of command for the emergency in Brussels is clear: there is only one woman in charge…