The architect of ruin: how Ursula von der Leyen destroyed the European dream

It has taken a mere five years—a blink of an eye in the grand tapestry of history—for Ursula von der Leyen to systematically dismantle the foundations of Europe’s economy.

While she may stride across the world stage with the practiced poise of a stateswoman, the wreckage she leaves in her wake tells a far more sinister story. Under her "leadership," the European Union is not merely stumbling; it is collapsing into a state of permanent decline, gasping for air while the rest of the global powers charge toward a prosperous future.

She would have you believe she is a savior. She boasts of steering the continent through the darkness of a pandemic. She preens over the massive expansion of the European Commission’s powers, as if the accumulation of bureaucratic weight were a substitute for economic vitality. She claims to have led the charge against climate change, the Russian invasion, and the rise of China.

Indeed, as she launched her bid for five more years of absolute influence, Von der Leyen had likely convinced herself of her own brilliance. But the reality is an indictment: she has been a catastrophe for the European people.

Over her tenure, she has shackled the continent with ruinous debt and unleashed a "green" crusade that is actively de-industrializing our heartlands. She has strangled the spirit of enterprise with a relentless barrage of growth-destroying regulations. On Von der Leyen’s watch, the EU has not just fallen behind; it has been discarded by the global market.

A legacy of bureaucratic vanity

In terms of sheer impact, Von der Leyen is perhaps the most significant commission president since Jacques Delors. But where Delors built the single market, Von der Leyen is presiding over its decay. Her predecessors, from the forgettable Jacques Santer to the uninspired José Manuel Barroso, left little more than a footprint. Von der Leyen, however, has left a scar.

She oversaw the final, bitter departure of the United Kingdom—a loss of talent and capital she did little to prevent. She seized unprecedented control of healthcare policy, using a global crisis to centralize power in Brussels. She pioneered the EU’s first venture into massive, collective borrowing, creating a mountain of debt that will haunt future generations. And she has transformed the Brussels machine into an intrusive, overreaching titan of industrial policy. It is a long list of "achievements," but for the average European citizen, it is a list of disasters.

The evidence of her failure is written in the cold, hard numbers of economic output. While every nation faced the pandemic, only under her stewardship has the gap between Europe and its rivals become a yawning chasm. By the end of 2023, the United States saw its GDP soar 8.2% above pre-2019 levels. The eurozone? A pathetic 3%.

Look at the "engines" of Europe: France has crawled forward by a measly 1.8% over five years, while Germany—once the industrial titan of the world—is functionally stagnant with a 0.1% increase. As the world steams ahead, the EU is sliding back into the cold embrace of recession. This is not bad luck; it is catastrophic mismanagement on a continental scale.

The three pillars of destruction

How did she do it? How did she manage to break the back of a superpower in five years? The answer lies in three fatal strategies.

First: The debt trap. She seduced the member states with the siren song of "free" money, launching a 700 billion euro Covid Recovery Fund funded by the EU's first-ever independent bonds. This was marketed as the birth of a fiscal union, a miracle cure for struggling economies like Italy. Instead, it has been a masterclass in waste.

Three years later, Italy remains trapped in its near-permanent recession, growing by a negligible 0.6% in 2023. The billions have vanished into vanity projects and bureaucratic sinkholes. The money is gone, the growth never arrived, but the debt—the crushing, inescapable debt—remains to be paid.

Second: The de-industrialization of a continent. Von der Leyen’s "Green New Deal" was sold as a visionary leap into the future. In reality, it has been a suicide note for European industry. By imposing a carbon border tax and pouring subsidies into unproven technologies, she has succeeded only in making Europe uncompetitive.

• Our world-leading auto industry is being systematically dismantled, unable to compete with Chinese models that were not hamstrung by Brussels’ red tape.

• Our energy independence is a joke; we have traded one dependency for another, now relying on China for the very wind and solar equipment she manufactures.

• Our farmers—the very people who feed the continent—have been driven to the streets in France, Spain, and Germany; their livelihoods sacrificed on the altar of the "Farm to Fork" strategy and its draconian pesticide bans.

Third: The death of innovation. Finally, there is the arrogance of the "regulatory superpower." Von der Leyen’s Brussels acts as if prosperity is created by pen-pushers rather than entrepreneurs. Nowhere is this more tragic than in the field of artificial intelligence.

Instead of fostering a European Silicon Valley, she gifted us the AI Act—a cumbersome, suffocating web of rules that crushes start-ups before they can even hire their first employee. Even her allies, like Emmanuel Macron, have been forced to admit this madness kills industry in its cradle. While the US and China carve up the future of technology, Europe is left to write the manuals on how to regulate a sector it no longer participates in.

The path to irrelevance

Europe is at a crossroads, but Ursula von der Leyen has already torn up the map. Our share of the global economy has plummeted from 30% two decades ago to a mere 15% today. Our welfare states are crumbling, our debts are rising, and our young people are looking elsewhere for opportunity.

The continent desperately needs growth, dynamism, and freedom. Instead, it is being offered five more years of the same inept, power-hungry leadership that brought it to its knees. If she is allowed to continue, the "European Project" will not end with a bang but with a whimper—a slow, regulated slide into total global irrelevance.