Europe Explained – Who is Ursula von der Leyen – European Commission president
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Ursula von der Leyen (1958) is a German politician from the CDU. Since 2013, she has been the minister of defence of Germany and the first woman in that function. And she is the only minister to have served in all four governments of German chancellor Angela Merkel. From 2005 until 2009 von der Leyen was minister of family affairs and youth, and from 2009 until 2013 minister of labour and social affairs.
Von der Leyen is the daughter of a European official (director-general) at the European Commission from 1958 onwards, the year the commission was established. She is born in Ixelles, Brussels and lived there until she was 13 years old. In 1971, the family moved to Lower Saxony, where her father was prime minister from 1976 until 1990. In 1991, von der Leyen graduated as a doctor of medicine.
In 2010, von der Leyen was Merkel’s candidate for the presidency of Germany, but her candidacy was blocked by a more conservative part of the CDU/CSU. In 2015, when Hungary used the water cannon and teargas against refugees at the Hungarian-Serbian border von der Leyen called the measures of prime minister Victor Orban “not acceptable and against the European rules we have”. Von der Leyen is a convinced European federalist, being in favour of a united states of Europe and a European army in the long term.
