Ursula von der Leyen’s perma-smile is morphing into a rictus grin.
2025 could have been the year the six-year Commission president made her long-held ambition to make the EU a geopolitical powerhouse a reality.
Instead, as this week’s failure to tap Russian assets for Ukraine showed, the EU will enter the new year cowed by big powers, and more divided than ever by its own internal far-right forces, who have been needlessly emboldened.
It could have been different.
Von der Leyen took her pliant commissioners to India in February, declaring an ambition to strike a trade deal by the year’s end. She planned to close the historic Mercosur agreement in Brazil on Saturday. In the end, both ended up postponed.