Von der Leyen’s first 100 days: What she’s promised, what it means and what she’ll really deliver
The Commission president is promising to move quickly with far-reaching reforms. How credible is her plan?
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On enlargement, her so-called policy reviews will give a clear indication of how quickly, or how slowly, the bloc wants to move forward with expansion to new members.
Overall, getting the newly assembled team of commissioners to deliver a series of papers may prove the easy part of von der Leyen’s second term. Much more challenging will be turning these early drafts into long-term changes.
To give you a better sense of what to expect, POLITICO’s expert reporters have combed through the promises and rendered judgment:
1. Clean Industrial Deal
What von der Leyen said: “We need a new Clean Industrial Deal for competitive industries and quality jobs in the first 100 days of the mandate. Our full focus will be on supporting and creating the right conditions for companies to reach our common goals. This means simplifying, investing and ensuring access to cheap, sustainable and secure energy supplies and raw materials.”
“This will prepare the way towards the 90 percent emission-reduction target for 2040 which we will propose to enshrine in our European Climate Law. At every step, we will work in partnership with industry, social partners and all stakeholders. We will put forward an Industrial Decarbonisation Accelerator Act to support industries and companies through the transition. This will channel investment in infrastructure and industry, in particular for energy-intensive sectors. It will support European markets for the development, production and diffusion in industry of clean tech. It will also help to speed up related planning, tendering and permitting processes.”
What does this really mean? A first step toward legislation. While it's unclear exactly what von der Leyen will present, the expectation is that it will provide a glimpse at how she aims to help EU businesses manage the transition to a decarbonized economy and stay afloat in the face of stiff competition from the U.S. and China, while following through with her landmark Green Deal climate package.
Why now? Hospitals globally have been the subject of serious cyber attacks in recent years, in particular ransomware — where the target is locked out of their data until they pay a ransom. Unsurprisingly, given the potential for causing chaos, hospitals are a favorite target of hackers, usually criminal gangs.
What are the key battles? Allocating responsibility: Cash-strapped public hospitals are unlikely to have the necessary resources to get their systems in order, and private healthcare providers might balk at the cost. Cybersecurity industry figures have also made complaints about a raft of sometimes overlapping requirements and initiatives, and adding more to that list might not go down well. Within the Berlaymont, commissioners-designate Henna Virkkunen and Olivér Várhelyi have been given responsibility for the project.
Likely to make a difference? The NIS2 Directive — currently being implemented at national level across the EU — already aims to protect critical industries like healthcare. But the elevation of the issue to the highest levels of EU politics is something to be welcomed.
— By Sam Clark
3. AI Factories Initiative
What von der Leyen said: “We will ensure access to new tailored supercomputing capacity for AI startups and industry through an AI Factories Initiative.”
What does this really mean? To train AI models, you need a lot of computing power. The EU wants to link AI startups with its EU-funded network of supercomputers (and also to reduce dependency on U.S. computing power).
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