\u201cThere isn\u2019t enough listening [in the Commission]. There isn\u2019t enough listening to the people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Von der Leyen has long been accused of sidelining critics, promoting allies, governing through close aides <\/a>and employing a Machiavellian divide-and-rule strategy<\/a> during her years running the EU\u2019s executive arm, which is made up of representatives from the bloc\u2019s 27 member states.<\/p>\n Barnier singled out excessive regulation and slow progress on integrating capital markets across the EU as major failures of the Commission during the von der Leyen years. The former French prime minister did, however, credit von der Leyen with successfully responding to the crises she faced, which have included the Covid pandemic and Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n Though Barnier and von der Leyen belong to the same political family, the conservative European People\u2019s Party, they have bad blood that dates back to the last days of the Brexit negotiations. According to Barnier, von der Leyen sidelined him as talks with then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson reached the endgame in 2020.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought it would be normal, after the work I\u2019d done, to be by her side in the last hours. But it was not the case,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n A spokesperson for the European Commission declined to comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThere isn\u2019t enough listening [in the Commission]. There isn\u2019t enough listening to the people,\u201d he said. Von der…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156394,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[14613,3444,5109,802,748,9654,33,34,2000,299,5187,1699,36,38,4884,2441,14614,809,2443,332,9655,1201,16,657,15,1220],"class_list":{"0":"post-156393","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-barnier","9":"tag-books","10":"tag-boris-johnson","11":"tag-brexit","12":"tag-britain","13":"tag-capital-markets","14":"tag-elections","15":"tag-emmanuel-macron","16":"tag-eu","17":"tag-europe","18":"tag-european","19":"tag-european-union","20":"tag-france","21":"tag-french-politics","22":"tag-great-britain","23":"tag-markets","24":"tag-michel-barnier","25":"tag-negotiations","26":"tag-regulation","27":"tag-russia","28":"tag-thierry-breton","29":"tag-trade","30":"tag-uk","31":"tag-ukraine","32":"tag-united-kingdom","33":"tag-ursula-von-der-leyen"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114622845659603393","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}