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BRUSSELS — Anyone remember the U.K.?
“From the beginning … the mandate … was very challenging,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told reporters in Brussels Wednesday, as she rattled through the main challenges she’s faced since 2019, focusing on the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“It started actually with Brexit — I tend to forget that — but this was the first month of my mandate,” she said. Von der Leyen made no reference to Brexit in her annual address to the European Parliament last September.
Von der Leyen, a German conservative, put herself forward this week for another five years running the powerful EU executive, which proposes new European laws. She is the clear front-runner for the job.
The decision will be taken after June’s European election by the EU’s 27 national leaders, who — according to the bloc’s treaties — should take the election results into account.
Von der Leyen’s center-right political family, the European People’s Party, said Wednesday that she is their only candidate, meaning she will be endorsed at a party congress in Bucharest in early March.
