EU chief Ursula von der Leyen elected for second five-year term
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00:00Ursula von der Leyen will be staying on as European Commission president. She's
00:04been re-elected by lawmakers at the European Parliament this Thursday. Von
00:09der Leyen has led the European Commission since 2019 as the first woman
00:13in the role and she will now be serving out a second five-year term. A majority
00:17in the 720 seat legislature voted for the German Christian Democrat after a
00:24speech in which she pledged to be a strong leader for Europe in a time of
00:27crisis and polarization. Take a listen. Russia is banking on Europe and the
00:34West going soft and some in Europe are playing along. Two weeks ago a European
00:45Union Prime Minister went to Moscow. This so-called peace mission was nothing but
00:53an appeasement mission. This was a plain appeasement mission. Joining me from
01:02Strasbourg is now our European Affairs Editor Armin Georgian. Armin, she's won
01:08the majority, she's now been re-elected, Ursula von der Leyen, but was this the
01:13formality that we expected or were there some stumbling blocks? It was definitely
01:23not a done deal. There was a lot of to and fro between the European Commission
01:29and Parliament in the last couple of weeks. Ursula von der Leyen meeting
01:33the main blocks in the European Parliament, doing this very difficult
01:38balancing act, trying to reassure each block that she would pursue at least
01:45parts of the agenda that they consider to be the most important to them and to
01:51their voters. It was obviously going to be impossible to satisfy everybody,
01:56but clearly, judging by the results, she did succeed in giving each block
02:01enough of what it wanted to hear and enough on the policy substance to
02:06clinch this vote quite comfortably. She needed 361 votes. She came out with
02:16401, so with a 40-seat cushion, if you will. It was interesting to watch the
02:22reactions, of course, a lot of smiles and pats and kisses on the cheeks and things
02:27like that, but the co-chair of the Greens, Thierry Reintke, got a big hug from von
02:32der Leyen and I think that shows that the support of the Greens was pretty
02:37crucial in this result. They're certainly taking credit for that. Now, we also have
02:43to understand that Ursula von der Leyen had this sort of pivot to the centre
02:47and to the Greens in the negotiations, as I said, that preceded this vote in the
02:52last couple of weeks and that moved to the centre. It did cost her some votes on
02:58the hard right. We know that members of the hard right ECR group, which is led by
03:03Giorgia Maloney, the Italian Prime Minister, although Maloney does not sit
03:06in the Parliament here, but we know that a number of those ECR MEPs voted
03:12against Ursula von der Leyen, but clearly she found the kind of political centre
03:18which was indeed enough in the end to give her this majority. And now there's
03:25going to be all kinds of views on what Ursula von der Leyen will be looking to
03:32implement in her second term. She says that democracy and defending democracy
03:37is the most important topic now for her next mandate, but what next steps do we
03:44expect from the European Commission President?
03:49Well, she's got to form the next European Commission, so the way that works is that
03:54national governments nominate their Commissioner and in fact some of them
03:59have already done that. So Ursula von der Leyen then has to, based on those
04:06nominations, form her team, which is a tricky balancing act, just as her speech
04:12in Parliament this morning was, where she's got to balance political parties
04:17and gender as well. And also what's interesting is that she announced this
04:24morning the creation of two new portfolios, so an EU Commissioner
04:29dedicated to housing and the housing crisis. So this was part of her kind of,
04:34in a sense, push for these social policies, which were music to the ears of
04:40the centre-left in the hemicycle. And also she announced the
04:46creation of a new European Commissioner for the Mediterranean, and this has to do
04:51with her whole line on migration. Part of her whole speech this morning was
04:57talking about how she's going to increase, actually triple,
05:02Frontex, that's the EU's border and coastguard agency, and also greatly sort
05:09of expand Europol to make it a kind of European police agency. So all this talk
05:16on migration, this focus on migration, is reflected also in this announcement of
05:20the creation of a post for the Mediterranean, a Commissioner for the
05:25Mediterranean. We don't know yet who those two jobs will go to, housing and
05:30the Mediterranean, but that will obviously be part of this intricate
05:34play of, you know, kind of balancing different interests and different
05:38countries and different national governments when she does form her team.
05:43And then of course those Commissioners, once they've been agreed on, they have to
05:47go up before Parliament here for confirmation hearings after the summer
05:52break.