After a Series of Missteps, the EU Faces Mounting Criticism

(Bloomberg) -- When Ursula von der Leyen’s foreign policy chief was humiliated by Russia’s top diplomat Sergei Lavrov in front of TV cameras on Friday, it capped a torrid few days for the European Union chief.

Battered by the bloc’s torpid Covid vaccine rollout and a sudden unforced error over export restrictions that handed the U.K. the political upper hand for the first time since Brexit began, von der Leyen was in a tough spot even before the embarrassment in Moscow.

Around the EU institutions in Brussels and in the national capitals that gave her the job, insiders are asking how the European Commission’s first woman president will be able to draw a line under the missteps and move the bloc forward.

Two diplomats told Bloomberg that after the problems of the previous few days they watched foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell’s news conference in Russia with their heads in their hands. They said von der Leyen had lost confidence among some EU governments, which will be difficult to win back.

Next comes the push for answers. On Wednesday, von der Leyen is likely to encounter the wrath of members of the European Parliament in Brussels when she appears before them for the first time since this latest set of difficulties.

Lawmakers, who have the ultimate power to fire presidents and their commissioner teams en masse, have already hinted at their simmering anger, with more than 70 of them this week signing a letter calling for Borrell to quit.

Rocky Future

The bloc is entering a pivotal period, when the EU’s most powerful leader, Angela Merkel, steps down in September, and with French President Emmanuel Macron heading toward an election in 2020, threatened by an ascendant far right. Without any certainty over when things will return to a post-pandemic normal and the economic recovery looking bumpy, the EU can’t afford too many more wrong moves.

The EU has been slow to vaccinate its people against the coronavirus relative to the U.K. and U.S., and the commission, which led negotiations with pharmaceutical companies, has taken much of the flak. While health care has previously been a national responsibility, the bloc’s leaders accepted the need for the vaccine process to be centralized so that its smaller countries wouldn’t be left behind.

Read More: Borrell to Seek More EU Sanctions Against ‘Merciless’ Russia

Despite the criticisms directed at the EU’s foreign policy and vaccination effort, von der Leyen still trusts Borrell and Stella Kyriakides, the EU’s health chief, according to a person familiar with her thinking. Merkel also lent her support to the commission, telling reporters last week that the EU did nothing wrong in its vaccine procurement strategy.

To add to the sense of turmoil, the commission on Jan. 29 announced -- then reversed a few hours later -- a plan to invoke the Brexit deal’s emergency clause to bring in temporary export vaccine controls between the EU and Northern Ireland.

By tampering with one of the most sensitive part of a divorce agreement that took 3 1/2 years of painful negotiation, the commission managed to unite the prime ministers of the U.K. and Ireland as well as opposing factions in Belfast.

Out of Sight

Von der Leyen has made few public appearances, which critics argue won’t help counter a rising chorus of euroskeptic politicians. She gave interviews published in several European newspapers on Feb. 4, in which she acknowledged the bloc had “underestimated” challenges associated with vaccine production, and, on the same day, addressed an online conference about how the 2020s will be the EU’s “digital decade.” She last appeared at a news conference on Jan. 21 after a virtual summit of the bloc’s national leaders.

The commission president fully supported Borrell’s trip to Moscow, the first such visit since his predecessor’s visit four years ago, according to people familiar with the situation, who asked not to be identified because the matter is private.

But critics recoiled at his gushing public congratulations for Russia’s Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine, which hasn’t been approved by EU regulators, at how he was drawn into criticizing American policy on Cuba and, possibly worst of all, how he remained quiet when Lavrov described the EU as “unreliable.”

Borrell suffered his own grilling by the European Parliament on Tuesday, when he told them that his visit “presented obvious risks” but “I took them.”

He presented the situation as a opportunity to assess the Kremlin’s desire to work constructively with the bloc. “I had no illusions before the visit,” he said. “I am even more worried after.”

Crisis Brewing

But Borrell’s visit raises questions about EU decision-making when the bloc has got so much on its plate and the commission is struggling to communicate effectively, one EU official said. In isolation, each of the missteps can be explained, but taken together they risk looking like a crisis, the official said.

There has been nothing normal about von der Leyen’s 14 months in office. The U.K. became the first country to leave the bloc nine weeks after she started in the job and the region has been in various states of lockdown because of the pandemic pretty much ever since.

So while the bloc’s 27 leaders understand the commission chief has been dealt a difficult hand, she needs to be able to convince them she’s got a handle on things by the time they meet for a two-day virtual summit at the end of February.

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.