By Martino Mazzonis
Last May, the Ciampi Institute of the Scuola Normale Superiore hosted the authors of a collection of essays examining the von der Leyen Commission from a gender perspective (The European Commission under President Ursula von der Leyen: Gender, Leadership, Policies, and Crises, Oxford University Press, 2025). Edited by Gabriele Abels (University of Tübingen), Johanna Kantola (University of Helsinki), Emanuela Lombardo (Scuola Normale Superiore), and Henriette Müller (New York University Abu Dhabi), the volume analyses the role gender issues have played in Ursula von der Leyen’s leadership, agenda-setting, and policymaking. What emerges is a mixed picture, in which attention to gender and positive innovations coexist with continuity and setbacks. We met with the editors, together with Anna Elomäki (Tampere University) and Jane Freedman (Paris 8 University), whose work is also featured in the book.
Von der Leyen chose to put gender issues at the top of the agenda during her first term, after years of women’s mobilization. Can we say that this new prominence given to gender issues was also a response to what was happening in European society?
Emanuela Lombardo: During the first term, we observed a clear response to conservative opposition to policies and discourse promoting gender equality, together with a proactive agenda. This undoubtedly also happened because there had long been pressure in favour of equality from the European Parliament and transnational civil society organizations. It was therefore not a one-woman show: these policies were the result of long-standing demands from both institutional actors and civil society.
Gabriele Abels: I would add that von der Leyen had already placed the issue on the agenda when she was a minister in Germany. Of course, all of this also builds on decades of women’s rights activism. However, under her predecessors there had never been a genuine Commission agenda on equality and women’s rights, never a real strategy, only internal documents. That was certainly a change. There is also the fact that she knew her appointment was contested and that she needed the support of the Social Democrats and the Greens, whom she addressed through her proposals on the Green Deal and on gender equality issues.
What happened between von der Leyen’s first and second terms, when that focus diminished?
Johanna Kantola: Something has changed today. We no longer have the same kind of pressure from the Parliament elected in 2024, which is dominated by the centre-right and the far right, while civil society organizations have also been silenced at European level. These are difficult times for the women’s movement, and the challenges are many. It is a clear shift. We should also consider that opposition to gender equality is a defining issue for the far right and the radical populist right. Under these circumstances, it is difficult to keep the issue on the agenda; today, all the focus is on competitiveness and defence. We cannot yet say whether the reduced momentum on gender equality means that these issues have become less important: the outcome is still open.
Henriette Müller: The issue is certainly no longer at the forefront in terms of communication. In one chapter of our book, Agnès Hubert and Sophie Jacquot discuss this strategic de-emphasis combined with work being carried out behind the scenes. It may be a good strategy, but at the same time it makes these issues much easier to sideline or roll back. It is therefore a strategy that involves considerable risks. We should also keep in mind that, in addition to Parliament, both the Council and the Commission are now largely made up of conservative forces, and these power balances are important when considering what kind of agenda can be pursued.
How important was the President’s own commitment in this shift towards greater attention to gender issues?
Gabriele Abels: Over the past twenty years, the role of the President of the Commission has changed and become more important: representing the Commission, setting the agenda, advancing specific issues, deciding who should hold which portfolio, or creating new ones. In this sense, it was very important that von der Leyen introduced, for the first time in history, a Commissioner for Equality. In von der Leyen’s second term, however, there has been a downgrading, because the same Commissioner now also has several other policy areas within her portfolio.
And how would you explain this change? Was being re-elected more important? One could argue that she looked at the political landscape and decided it was appropriate to take a step back on equality.
Henriette Müller: We should also take the institutional political context into account. At national level, someone running for a party with a certain programme may or may not be elected. Von der Leyen, although nominated by the European People’s Party (EPP), still had to win over Parliament once again. There is therefore a constant need to engage with the broader political landscape and to include very different issues and perspectives. And, as we were saying, the political context has changed.
Gabriele Abels: I think the German context should also be added to this new picture: Merz has pushed very strongly on the issue of combustion engines, as has the EPP leader in Brussels, Manfred Weber. At the same time, Macron and some of the other major countries have their own agendas — Meloni, or the conservative government in Poland, for example.
How much does opposition to gender policies influence the European Union’s choices?
Emanuela Lombardo: The first von der Leyen Commission had a proactive equality policy, not only on gender, but also on LGBTQIA+ equality and anti-racism. There was a broad institutionalization of equality: the first Commissioner for Equality, the first Anti-Racism Coordinator. There was a real positive momentum, including in the response to opposition from the far right, through political discourse, policymaking, infringement procedures, and financial sanctions. Today, we are seeing a downgrading of the institutionalization of equality. The position of the Anti-Racism Coordinator has also been weakened. All of this has an impact on policy: the Anti-Discrimination Directive, for example, is no longer on the agenda. And yet, I believe some of the policies that were introduced will still have long-term effects. There has been an unprecedented ruling by the Court of Justice on fundamental rights, and the Hungarian government was condemned for state-level institutional homophobia, in what amounted to a pioneering use of Article 2 on values and fundamental rights.
Let us talk about leadership style. Feminist criticism of a masculine way of exercising power seems to clash, I would say, with the assertive and centralized way in which she has governed.
Henriette Müller: One chapter of the book compares different Commissions, starting with Prodi — Prodi, Barroso I and II, Juncker, and von der Leyen — and shows that von der Leyen tends to be somewhat more collegial. Women may work differently within institutions, shifting the focus of policies. At the same time, as everyone has pointed out, institutional constraints exist. Feminist institutionalism emphasizes the weight of the masculine legacy and often argues that change can be very incremental, or that it is not enough to look only at descriptive representation. Of course, we might say that we have ticked all the boxes by putting women in key positions, but institutional structures may still retain their original cultural imprint.
There are also enormous limitations when we look at migration policy…
Jane Freedman: Undoubtedly. Gender equality is in no way integrated into policies concerning migration and asylum. In the new 2024 Migration Pact, gender is framed exclusively in terms of protecting vulnerable people — namely women. More generally, from 1999 onwards, the EU has progressively moved towards treating migration as a “security” issue, implementing increasingly violent border protection measures and denying migrants their rights. In contrast with the gender-equality and LGBTQIA+ strategies, gender is almost entirely absent from the Commission’s communication on the Pact, except in relation to trafficking. Gender issues do, however, enter anti-immigration discourse: “Muslim men are dangerous to women,” and they are mentioned only to a very limited extent in speeches and statements. There is also a contradiction between the rhetoric that asylum seekers “in most cases would not need protection” and the claim that there is a need to attract skilled labour. Finally, with the Ukrainian crisis, we also see a racialization of those who need protection, distinguishing between people fleeing who are “European like us” and others.
We began with innovations in governance and in challenging the choices made by the Hungarian and Polish governments, but has the social agenda changed?
Anna Elomäki: One of the ambitious goals of the first von der Leyen Commission was “An Economy that Works for People” (An economy for the people), but how much change actually took place in policy? And what role did gender equality play? Traditionally, the EU has prioritized market-building rather than correcting the market, and the truth is that, despite changes in the vocabulary being used, there has been no fundamental rebalancing of social and economic objectives in economic governance and decision-making. Under the second von der Leyen Commission, there is also a contradiction between announcements of social policies and the revised fiscal rules, which may produce negative social effects. We should ask to what extent the positive developments were due to the President’s role and how much they depended instead on the political and institutional context — the composition of Parliament, the role of the Commissioner for Social Affairs, the Spanish and Belgian EU Presidencies, and other supportive governments. And are we now in a phase in which that context has changed and, as a result, social objectives are being downgraded and subsumed under competitiveness and defence? The first phase of the second term is not positive: competitiveness is becoming a key priority, while the discourse about an economy serving people has disappeared, and very little social legislation is planned. Even the language is becoming more individualistic: “people” and “skills” instead of “social policy.”
Further reading
G. Abels, J. Kantola, E. Lombardo, H. Müller (eds.), The European Commission under President Ursula von der Leyen: Gender, Leadership, Policies, and Crises, Oxford University Press, 2025
This interview has been published in Italian on InGenere https://www.ingenere.it/articoli/europa-luci-e-ombre