Europhile, a polyglot, Ursula von der Leyen, who is running for the presidency of the European Commission on Tuesday (July 16th), is close to Angela Merkel, who, however, saw her star fade in Germany after having been a runner-up at the time.
Only personality to have sat in the four governments of the Chancellor (2005-2019), dubbed by Emmanuel Macron, the mother of seven children aged 60, hopes to bounce back with the leadership of the European executive.
She warned Monday that she would leave whatever happened her current position as Defense Minister on Wednesday.
Speaking English and French fluently, this German Christian Democrat knows Brussels well: born October 8, 1958 in Ixelles, she spent, like her six brothers and sisters, part of her childhood in the Belgian capital, before her father, Ernst Albrecht becomes Prime Minister of Lower Saxony.
Despite these strengths, collecting the 374 votes needed to lead the next five years is far from over.
"Inadequate candidate"
In all European political families, the idea of choosing a person who was not even a candidate in the European elections was perceived as a challenge to the goal of democratization of the European Union.
The hearings conducted in recent days in the European arcades by Ursula von der Leyen, converted very recently to social networks and assisted for his communication of a former editor-in-chief of Bild, have not allowed to remove all doubts of its detractors.
The Social Democrats, who sit alongside him in the Merkel government, have distributed to MEPs a document entitled "Why Ursula von der Leyen is an inadequate and inappropriate candidate".
The text outlines all the grievances accumulated in recent years against Ursula von der Leyen, a doctor by training.
It was not until 2002, after several years in California, where her husband was teaching, that she went for a local assignment in the Hanover area.
Three years later, she becomes Minister of the Family and takes progressive measures, such as the development of nurseries or paid parental leave for fathers.
Appointed Minister of Labor in 2009, Ursula von der Leyen is also backing the conservative electorate by advocating for quotas for women in business management.
She shakes up the army
It is from 2013, at the Defense, that things go bad.
The first woman to occupy this position, prestigious but delicate in a Germany still haunted by the Second World War, Ursula von der Leyen upsets the institution.
The minister is also suspected a time in 2015 plagiarism of her doctorate, a very sensitive topic in Germany that has caused the fall of several politicians.
A series of scandals have beset the Bundeswehr and its ministry in recent years: obsolete equipment, under-investment, overpaid consultants, influence of the far right ... To the point that it is now perceived, according to polls, as one of the two least competent ministers.
With AFP