The Ukraine war: von der Leyen’s "geopolitical coup"

How von der Leyen used the Russia-Ukraine war to massively expand the Commission's powers — and supranationalise the EU's security policy

Among the several tragic implications of the war in Ukraine, there is one that has gone relatively unnoticed: the way in which Ursula von der Leyen has used the Ukraine crisis to push for an expansion of the Commission’s top-down executive powers, leading to a de facto supranationalisation of the EU’s foreign policy, including on defence and security matters, over which the Commission has no formal competence, ensuring the bloc’s alignment with (or better, subordination to) the US-NATO strategy.

Traditionally, the Commission has held a weak position in the foreign policy domain and particularly in defence and security policy — over which the Commission has no direct jurisdiction under the European treaties — and supranational integration in this area has long been seen as a “least likely” case. Prior to the von der Leyen presidency, the Commission had already slowly been expanding its role in the foreign policy domain as well, often by “circumventing” formal decision-making processes, but its role remained limited. To the extent that the EU would speak as a single voice on matters of foreign policy, this job was (formally) reserved to the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (established by the 2009 Lisbon Treaty), and even then just to convey the intergovernmental consensus among member states as a de facto extension of the Council, not as an autonomous supranational voice. Von der Leyen was determined to change this.

Shortly after first assuming the presidency of the Commission, in 2019, von der Leyen identified the creation of a “geopolitical Commission” as one of her main priorities. The EU, she asserted, needed to become a major “geopolitical” actor “to shape a better world order”. Chaos and crisis demanded that it “learn to speak the language of power”. What she was declaring was, in fact, her intention of broadening the Commission’s scope into domains that have traditionally been the remit of national governments, namely foreign policy and defence and security matters.

She was anticipating, in other words, yet another institutional coup aimed at achieving yet more supranational unification and centralisation, in the one area where governments have historically been most reluctant to grant the EU and its institutions a greater policy role. Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine provided her with the perfect opportunity to do just that. Interestingly, for all of von der Leyen’s talk of boosting the EU’s geopolitical role, in the critical months leading up to Russia’s invasion the EU’s role remained marginal vis-à-vis that of the US. There was, as far as is known, no consultation by the United States of European governments or, for that matter, the EU, with the bloc appearing to have been largely confined to the sidelines of the crisis.

Following Russia’s invasion, however, the EU, through the European Commission, suddenly adopted a much more activist role, with von der Leyen once again seizing the window of opportunity created by the crisis to place herself at the lead of the bloc’s response, just as she had done at the onset of the Covid crisis. This allowed her to pursue two mutually reinforcing goals: expand the Commission’s mandate on security, while at the same time ensuring the bloc’s alignment with (or better, subordination to) the US-NATO strategy, by essentially transforming the Commission into “an extended European arm of NATO and the United States”, as Wolfgang Streeck aptly put it:

Lacking jurisdiction under the European treaties on military and defense matters, the Commission sought to identify gaps in the capacities of EU member states and NATO that it could offer to fill, hoping thereby to enhance, or restore, its governing capabilities as an international institution.

Von der Leyen’s first step was devising in record time an unprecedented, wide-ranging sanctions regime against Russia. The first sanctions package was adopted literally the day after Russia’s invasion, on February 25, to which dozens of other packages followed. These included asset freezes and travel bans, banking and central banking restrictions such as the exclusion from the SWIFT system, export controls and import bans, and embargoes on Russian energy.

Much has been said about the sanctions and their effectiveness — or better, lack thereof. But an aspect that has gone largely unnoticed is the way in which the sanctions have been used by von der Leyen to, once more, surreptitiously broaden the powers of the Commission, at the expense of the Council and member states.

Traditionally, the formulation of sanctions saw the Council at the driving seat in setting up the sanctions regime, and the Commission following up with the technicalities and the oversight implementation. The post-invasion sanctions regime, on the other hand, saw a dramatic reversal of roles: though nothing changed from a formal procedural standpoint — the Commission would table the proposed restrictions alongside the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, which then had to be approved by the European Council via unanimous vote — on this occasion the Commission took on a greater role than ever before in the development of the sanctions policy.

There are several factors to consider here. First, as during previous crises, the perceived need to act swiftly and decisively meant that the Commission, as the institutional locus of expertise in this field, was well positioned to take matters in its own hands, as von der Leyen immediately proceeded to do, proposing several packages in rapid-fire succession with little prior consultation with member states, especially when it came to the first packages. As Politico explained:

Throughout the preparation process, it was the Commission that [took] the lead on sanctions, consulting some national capitals like Berlin, Paris and Rome — but for the most part meeting representatives of member countries in small groups to sound out their views. Fearful that the ambitious package of sanctions could leak, the Commission never provided a draft text, until the final moment when member countries were poised to consider it.

The shock of the invasion, which caused a “significant reformulation” of member states’ views on and threat perception from Russia, also meant that member states were happy (or saw little choice but) to go along, at least at first. Peer pressure did the rest. According to one scholar, “the immense political pressure furthermore meant that in the first month after the Russian invasion, member states would accept almost any sanctions measures proposed” — even on issues that were politically very sensitive for member states, such as the ousting of Russian banks from the SWIFT system, or energy sanctions on coal and crude oil.

This is not to say that member states had no say whatsoever in the development of the sanctions regime; however, the Commission was clearly more inclined to listen to some governments rather than others. For example, one study noted that in early months following the invasion, “hawkish” frontline governments on the bloc’s eastern and northern flank “would send ‘their wildest sanctions dreams’ to the Commission, [which] would then, more often than not, include them directly into the proposed sanctions package”.

This reflected the shifting of the European geopolitical axis of power engendered by the Russia-Ukraine war — from the west to the north-east — to which the US lent considerable support in the context of the growing NATO-isation of the EU. Once again, one is reminded that the EU’s decision-making process is always the outcome of a complex interplay of national, international and supranational dynamics — with the noticeable absence, as always, of the demos.

This points to another crucial factor in explaining the central role assumed by the Commission in the sanctions policy: the transatlantic dimension. Because the sanctions were part of a Western-wide policy that ultimately took its cue from Washington, von der Leyen was able to use her strong transatlantic ties to further bolster her role and leverage. A few months after the invasion, Politico wrote that von der Leyen — dubbed “Europe’s American president” by the magazine — had “emerged as the person to call when US officials want to call Europe”:

[V]on der Leyen has seized a firm grip on the transatlantic dialogue on Russia and sanctions policy, becoming US President Joe Biden’s primary interlocutor — the woman the White House calls when America wants to talk to the EU. And she and her team are given credit for navigating the typical pitfalls of EU discord over sanctions policy, successfully delivering round after round of punishing measures with relatively limited dissent.

As Wolfgang Streeck noted, aligning the EU with the US-NATO strategy also served von der Leyen’s self-aggrandising strategy:

In its effort at supranational European state-building, the European Commission under von der Leyen deploy[ed] American pressure for European support in Ukraine as a lever to wrest from its member states additional powers and competences, a strategy supported by large sections of the European Parliament.

Von der Leyen could also count on the fact that Björn Seibert, her then (and still today) head of cabinet, is a personal friend of US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. As the Financial Times reported, “in a departure from previous practices, the EU effort was co-ordinated directly [with Washington] from von der Leyen’s office through Björn Seibert”. Rather shockingly, one EU ambassador noted that the cooperation between the United States and the EU leadership meant that “the US at the beginning knew more about the work on EU sanctions than the EU member states”.

This, in turn created an institutional path dependency, whereby the marginalisation of member states in the formulation of the sanctions regime resulted in von der Leyen and her cabinet becoming the “only actors with an overview of the overall sanctions discussions”, which in turn created a self-reinforcing dynamic that led to a growing centralisation and de facto supranationalisation of the whole process. Moreover, as during previous crises, it wasn’t long before the new interinstitutional dynamics created by the “reality on the ground” were formalised and crystallised through new institutional arrangements. Indeed, von der Leyen was explicit in the way she framed the crisis as one that required swift institutional change to adapt to the new status quo. In a speech before the European Parliament shortly after the invasion, she argued:

[When] we are resolute, Europe can rise up to the challenge. The same is true on defence. European security and defence has evolved more in the last six days than in the last two decades. […] This is a watershed moment for our Union.

Thus, in late 2022, a decision was taken by the Council to give the Commission the power to establish and enforce EU-wide penalties for the violation of sanctions, something which until then had been the remit of individual member states. Crucially, by using the European Parliament urgency procedure, the existing system was overhauled without involving the EP Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs or the Economic and Social Council, and without the conduct of the normally compulsory impact assessment — yet another example of how crisis/emergency politics tend to lead to rapid institutional changes that almost invariably entail a growing supranationalisation and “Commissionisation” of the EU’s decision-making process, and to a growing lack of democratic scrutiny.

The pivotal role of the Commission, and of von der Leyen in particular, in responding to the Ukraine crisis was further accentuated by an unusually aggressive discourse in the presentation of the sanctions rounds. Using unprecedentedly harsh language, von der Leyen spoke of the EU sanctions packages as being designed to “systematically degrade Russia’s industrial and economic base”, “cripple Putin’s ability to finance his war machine”, “further isolate Russia and drain the resources it uses to finance this barbaric war”, “hit a central sector of Russia’s system” and “deprive it of billions of export revenues”. Aside from the language used, von der Leyen also upended the protocol by sidelining the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, who at the time was Josep Borrell, when presenting the packages. As one scholar argued:

Due to sanctions’ traditionally inter-pillar nature as economic and financial tools deployed for political purposes, one would expect the [High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy] to be entrusted with their public communication. He emerges as the ideal figure because his post brings together the Commission’s competences in economic and financial governance with the political role in foreign affairs of the Council. […] Yet, in the communication of new EU sanctions packages, it was the Commission President von der Leyen that assumed the leading role. Only after her initial announcement of the adoption of every new sanctions round, the President typically gave the floor to the [High Representative] Josep Borrell, who outlined the specifics of each package.

As the Commission, in the months following the invasion, continued to churn out proposals for increasingly harsher and broad-based sanctions, we started witnessing pushback from some EU leaders — most notably Viktor Orbán. “The attempts to weaken Russia have not succeeded”, he said in mid-2022. “By contrast, it is Europe that could be brought to its knees by brutal inflation and energy shortages resulting from sanctions”. The negotiations on the sixth sanctions package were especially difficult, as Hungary blocked this package for a long time. In the end, Hungary received an exemption from the ban on Russian crude oil.

Events would prove Orbán right. Two years after the start of the conflict, von der Leyen still insisted that “layer by layer, [the] sanctions are peeling off Russian industrial society”, even though by then it had become apparent that the sanctions had completely failed to reach their stated goal of crippling the Russian economy, and had in fact catastrophically backfired: the Russian economy was soaring, in part thanks to the sanctions themselves, which spurred Russia to adopt a policy of trade protection, industrial policy and capital controls that it couldn’t have plausibly implemented on its own initiative; meanwhile, large parts of Western Europe had moved into a recession, also in large part thanks to the sanctions themselves and the decoupling from Russian gas.

But from von der Leyen’s perspective, her aggressive approach has been a success, allowing her to single-handedly “supranationally” set the tone of the bloc’s response — and to ensure a much more hawkish response than a more consensual intergovernmental approach would likely have led to, often using rhetoric even more militant than that of the US itself. This also meant tirelessly declaring the unwavering commitment of the EU and its member states to Ukraine’s maximalist victory-at-all-costs strategy — i.e., that Ukraine should go on fighting until it retakes every inch of lost territory, including Crimea, no matter the human or economic cost, and that Putin should not be negotiated with — despite the reservations that some countries, including France and Germany, had about this approach, especially early on.

The Commission also played a crucial role getting the EU to break the taboo on financing lethal weapons when it decided to fund the provision of lethal military aid to Ukraine. As article 41.2 of the Treaty of the European Union explicitly prohibits “expenditure arising from operations having military or defence implications”, this move required some creativity to circumvent. To this end, the Commission diverted €3.6 billion of its European Peace Facility (EPF) — an off-budget funding mechanism created to “prevent conflicts, build and preserve peace and strengthen international security and stability”— to provide lethal and non-lethal military support for Ukraine. It was the first time the European Peace Facility, somewhat of a misnomer at this point, had ever been used to provide weapons to a country at war. This decision is even more impressive considering that the EU comprises three military-neutral member states, namely Austria, Ireland and Malta.

Meanwhile, von der Leyen remained steadfast in offering Ukraine the possibility of full EU membership. Promises of accelerated accession came with long-term commitments to economic support for Ukraine’s recovery, both during and after the war. In late 2022, von der Leyen declared that Ukraine’s rebuilding would require “a comprehensive Marshall Plan” for which the EU would “present a new Ukraine reconstruction platform”. Almost two years later, she repeated “Europe’s steadfast commitment to support Ukraine as long as it takes”, stating that the European Union “stand[s] firmly by Ukraine, financially, economically, militarily and most of all morally, until [the] country is finally free”.

As with the sanctions, or any other issue for that matter, the point is not whether one agrees with the policies outlined by von der Leyen or not. The point is the way in which, through such statements, she is able to “lock in” policies before they have been formally approved by member states, let alone national parliaments — not only on crucial matters of military and security policy, but on fiscal/spending policy as well. One may argue that member states ultimately remain in charge to the extent that any policy ultimately needs to be approved by the European Council, but this ignores the way in which such statements effectively create a new epistemic “reality on the ground”, or fait accompli, to which member states then come under heavy pressure to conform to.

In this regard, it’s worth reminding that, for all of the US’s berating of Europe for refusing to “pay their fair share” for defence, as of June 2024, EU countries and EU institutions have allocated altogether €110 billion to Ukraine, while the total financial aid allocated by the United States stands at “only” €75 billion — and this tendency is becoming even more pronounced. Meanwhile, there has been no discussion about the challenges that admitting a country like Ukraine into the EU, with its requirement for prolonged financial aid, would pose to the EU’s internal political and financial stability.

What’s particularly tragic is that von der Leyen’s authoritarian, top-down approach to the Ukraine crisis hasn’t transformed the EU into a “geopolitical actor” capable of standing on its own on the world stage, and standing up for its interests, as she had heralded at the start of her presidency, which may have partly justified this approach; on the contrary, by unquestioningly deferring to US strategy, von der Leyen has made the EU more “vassalised” to the US (in the words of an analyst for the European Council on Foreign Relations) than ever before. As Orbán recently put it: “Europe has given up defending its own interests: all that Europe is doing today is unconditionally following the foreign policy line of the US Democrats — even at the cost of its own self-destruction”. To a large degree we have von der Leyen to thank for that.

A final point that deserves to be mentioned is the way in which von der Leyen’s Commission used the war in Ukraine — and specifically the threat of “Russian disinformation” — to push for the approval of a pervasive new censorship regime in the form of the Digital Services Act (DSA), a law initially proposed by von der Leyen in 2019 requiring social media platforms to remove any content that the Commission itself deems to be “hate speech” or “disinformation” (based on vague and ever-shifting definitions). While the Commission claims that this is all about protecting users, it’s easy to see why many believe that the ultimate goal is that of censoring dissent and controlling the online narrative — particularly surrounding highly contentious issues such as the Russia-Ukraine war.

It’s no coincidence that the European Commission’s first-ever DSA report was entirely focused on the question of “Russian disinformation”. Tellingly, the report puts “Kremlin-aligned accounts” — potentially any account that is critical of the EU-NATO approach to the war — almost on the same plane as accounts that are connected or associated with the Russian state. Meanwhile, the Commission has also supported a wide range of other initiatives to combat “misinformation” and “disinformation” related to the conflict.

Overall, the Ukraine provides yet another textbook example of integration by stealth through crisis — or, in this case, war — whereby the European Commission uses crises to push for the expansion of its top-down executive powers, de facto or de jure, including in areas where it lacks formal competence, such as foreign policy and defence and security matters, leading to an ever-growing supranationalisation (and, in parallel, denationalisation and de-democratisation) of the EU’s decision-making process. Allegedly “one-off” emergency solutions that are presented as contingent on responding swiftly to the crisis at hand — such as granting more leeway than ever before to the Commission in devising the sanctions policy — give rise to new institutional realities which then become the status quo.

Thus, it’s no surprise that, at the outbreak of the Israel-Gaza war, von der Leyen once again saw fit to speak (and act) on behalf on the whole bloc. A week after the October 7 attack, for example, she made an unscheduled trip to Israel, of which she had reportedly informed no one, where she affirmed the EU’s unwavering support for Israel. Not only had she not consulted with EU leaders prior to the trip — or even told them about it — but while there she did not even relay the position adopted by European foreign ministers calling for Israel to respect international law. This caused sharp criticism from several EU leaders and officials. “I don’t understand what the president of the Commission has to do with foreign policy, which is not her mandate”, Nathalie Loiseau, a European lawmaker and senior member of French President Emmanuel Macron’s Renew Europe group, wrote on X.

Even Josep Borrell, formally the EU’s foreign policy chief, issued a rare public rebuke of von der Leyen, saying that she isn’t entitled to represent EU views on foreign policy, which are normally coordinated between member countries. Foreign policy is decided by the leaders of the EU’s 27 countries at international summits, and discussed by foreign ministers in meetings “chaired by me”, Borrell told journalists. EU Council president Charles Michel also conveyed the frustration of state leaders when he said that the EU had “paid the price” for von der Leyen’s management of the Gaza crisis, referring to the damage to the EU’s image in the Middle East and regretting that the Commission made statements “without any legitimacy”.

That might very well be the case, but most EU leaders bear a big responsibility for this situation. By allowing von der Leyen and the Commission to relentlessly broaden their powers, one silent coup after another — first during the pandemic, then over the Ukraine war — they have contributed to this new reality coming into being. And, by re-electing von der Leyen, they have ensured that this process of creeping supranationalisation will continue in the years to come.

This is an extract from my recent MCC Brussels report, The silent coup: the European Commission’s power grab, available here.

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Thomas Fazi

Website: thomasfazi.net

Twitter: @battleforeurope 

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