Strasbourg at a Crossroads: Von der Leyen’s Moment and Europe’s Double Bind
The hemicycle in Strasbourg hummed like a pressure cooker. Lights glared, cameras circled, and the air tasted faintly of coffee and old paper as Ursula von der Leyen took her place before European Parliament. Outside, the cobbled streets shifted between tourist footsteps and political pilgrimage — journalists, activists, MEPs, and ordinary residents all threading through the city that has for decades hosted Europe’s truest theatrical stage for politics.
It was, by any measure, a moment of peril. The Commission president arrived after a bruising summer: a confidence motion in July, public fury over her handling of trade talks with the United States, and a poll across France, Spain, Italy, Germany and Poland showing 6 in 10 people thought she should resign. Three-quarters of respondents believed she had failed to defend European interests in those negotiations; 77% said the deal favoured the US. That is an unforgiving backdrop for any speech intended to reset a leader’s course.
“You could feel it in the room,” said a veteran MEP who asked not to be named. “People were ready to cheer, to boo, to test whether this Commission can still meet the moment.”
A combative declaration: Europe “in a fight”
She did not come with the language of consolation. “Europe is in a fight,” von der Leyen declared. “A fight for a continent that is whole and at peace, for a free and independent Europe… Make no mistake — this is a fight for our future.” The lines landed like a drumbeat, timed to the anxieties playing on televisions across the continent: inflation, war in Ukraine, the Gaza catastrophe, the shifting tectonics of the US presidency and China’s assertiveness.
The speech lasted more than an hour, punctuated by applause and persistent heckling — the far right jeering from the benches, leftists rising in protest at images of Gaza, some MEPs wearing red as a sign of solidarity with the victims. Von der Leyen tried to reposition herself not as an institutionalist speaking for institutions but as a leader who was feeling the tremors that families and voters feel: “People can feel the ground shift beneath them,” she told the chamber, invoking the cost-of-living squeeze and the relentless stream of traumatic images on our screens.
Targeted appeals — housing, climate, security
She reached toward the fractured centre. For social democrats she promised a European Affordable Housing Plan, calling shortages “a social crisis… [which] tears at the heart of Europe’s social fabric.” For Greens, she reaffirmed commitment to the Green Deal, restating the European target to cut emissions by at least 55% by 2030 — a pledge that remains politically and technically heavy with promise and complication.
“It was an attempt to recapture the centre ground and to reconstruct the very fragile centre platform that keeps her where she is,” observed Fianna Fáil MEP Barry Andrews. “It depends on member states doing the right thing, and on delivery by the Commission.”
Gaza, Israel and the politics of response
The most charged passages were about Gaza. Von der Leyen’s posture had long been contested: critics said her early visit to Israel after the 7 October attacks signalled too unqualified a backing for the Netanyahu government. For weeks, activists across Europe and voices inside the Parliament accused the Commission of failing to match rhetoric with hard measures.
“What is happening in Gaza has shaken the conscience of the world,” she said in Strasbourg. “People killed while begging for food. Mothers holding lifeless babies. These images are simply catastrophic. Man-made famine can never be a weapon of war.” That rhetoric was followed by action — limited, contingent, and immediately framed by political caveats.
The Commission announced the partial suspension of bilateral funding with Israel, the freezing of small streams of funds — later clarified by an official as roughly €14 million immediately and another €12 million over two years — and proposed sanctions on extremist ministers and settlers in the West Bank. The proposals also included a potential partial suspension of preferential trade measures under the EU-Israel Association Agreement and signaling against Israel’s participation in large EU programmes, including a mention of the €95 billion Horizon Europe research fund (Israel has received about €200 million from that fund since 2021).
Yet every step was hostage to national capitals. Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Italy are among those that have historically restrained a firmer collective EU approach. “The answer to whether tougher measures will hold? Good question,” said one EU diplomat. “It continues to lie in Berlin.”
Voices of outrage and doubt
For many on the left, the move did not go far enough. “While a genocide rages in Gaza and Israel rips up international law your response is pathetic,” Labour MEP Aodhán Ó Riordáin told the chamber. “The partial suspension of the association agreement you announced today is an insult. This is not a partial genocide. 20,000 Palestinian children are not partially dead.”
At a café nearby, a volunteer handing out flyers put it differently. “People want action, not declarations. We want medical corridors, food, safe zones — and we want Europe to stop sending diplomatic sweeteners while civilians suffer,” said Myriam, who volunteers with a Strasbourg aid collective. Her plate of croissant crumbs sat beside a printout of von der Leyen’s speech — a microcosm of the tension between policy and pain.
Defence, the SAFE programme and the European semester for defence
Much of von der Leyen’s speech was also about preparing Europe for harder times — not just rhetorically but materially. She outlined an accelerated programme of coordinated defence spending designed to shore up air-defence and other capability gaps identified alongside NATO. The so-called SAFE initiative, framed as €150 billion in soft loans, has already seen 18 member states opt into loans totaling €127 billion; Ireland, for instance, has not taken loans but is expected to participate in joint procurement projects.
She also floated a controversial idea: a “European defence semester,” a retooling of a financial-crisis era oversight mechanism, now applied to defence budgets and capabilities. “The line between where Europe starts and NATO ends on defence is quite blurred,” said Tom Hanney, former Irish ambassador to the EU, noting the political sensitivity of national defence oversight.
Academic Brigid Laffan warned that if Russia prevails in Ukraine, “the European Union as a peace project will be peril.” Her point lands as a practical reminder: security, economy, climate and foreign policy are not separate boxes — they are braided strands.
So what happens next?
Von der Leyen’s speech was an attempt at a reset. It was defiant, sometimes eloquent, sometimes hedged. It sought to stitch together a coalition of centre-left voters, Greens and moderates who feel their continent is slipping from their grasp. But speeches translate into policy only when 27 national capitals align — and when they don’t, rhetoric can ring hollow.
Will the member states muster the political courage to turn words into penalties and programmes? Can a Commission president centralize power around a handful of files without provoking a backlash from governments protective of sovereignty? And perhaps most pressingly for ordinary Europeans: will these high-level manoeuvres translate into more affordable housing, lower bills, safer streets and a sense that the institutions in Brussels are on their side?
On a late afternoon, as plenary let out and the Parliament’s stone façade caught the sun, an elderly resident of Strasbourg watching the crowds shrugged and said, “Europe has always been messy. But today it feels like a crossroads. I hope they choose the road that keeps us together.”
Whatever the answers, von der Leyen’s speech made one thing clear: the EU is no longer drifting. It has been pulled into the hard currents of geopolitics, domestic grievance and generational anxiety — and how it steers from here will matter not only for Brussels, but for a world watching whether rules, rights and alliances can still hold.
