In a guest column for Focus magazine, former {Der Spiegel] Washington correspondent [Gabor Steingart]((https://www.focus.de/politik/ausland/eu/gastbeitrag-von-gabor-steingart-schulden-migration-green-deal-warum-von-der-leyens-zeit-abgelaufen-ist_id_259664534.html) harshly denounced EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen as chief responsible for the disasters brought to Europe with the Green Deal and sanctions against Russia. Her time is up, he wrote listing her seven sins, which disqualify her for a second term after the Euro Parliament elections in June, which rumors in Brussels say she is planning.
Steingart’s main charges are that von der Leyen has turned Europe into a debtor on the capital market, with the “Next Generation EU” reconstruction program in the wake of the coronavirus crisis involving €750 billion, which now exists as Community debt. De facto, von der Leyen has thus introduced Eurobonds. Just a reminder: the Union had promised its voters that it would never happen.
Her conduct in the negotiations on new trade agreements with South America’s Mercosur and other countries provoked allergic reactions worldwide, Steingart charges: In Asia and Latin America, people want to import European goods, but not the political guidelines of the EU Commission President. They are not for sale internationally.
The 34 draft laws under the heading “Green Deal” have moved Europe further away from a functioning market economy than ever before. The state not only wants to play a decisive role in energy policy—keyword: electricity market design—but is also intervening deeply in the continent’s industrial value chains. It has been at the forefront of advocating tough economic sanctions against Russia, whose consequences have not damaged the Russian economy, but devastated the European ones. In trade with China, she loyally followed the Americans, who would like to get rid of their arch-rival from Asia with the help of protectionism.
