After the disappointment in Russia (see EUROPE 12653/12) of the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, it was the turn of the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, to have to grit her teeth, this time in Turkey.
At the meeting between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, European Council President Charles Michel, and the President of the European Commission on Tuesday 6 April, only two chairs were set up in front of the EU and Turkish flags, forcing von der Leyen to sit - to her astonishment and without any reaction from Michel, according to footage of the meeting - on an adjacent sofa. This is a situation that the Commission does not want to see repeated.
“The President of the European Commission was clearly surprised”, acknowledged the institution’s spokesman Eric Mamer on Wednesday 7 April. In his view, Ms von der Leyen should have “been seated in exactly the same way as the President of the European Council and the Turkish President”, and it is “obvious” that during a joint visit to a foreign country the Presidents of the European Council and the Commission should be treated in the same way.
While Ms von der Leyen “expects the institution she represents to be treated with the required protocol”, she “decided to go ahead anyway, giving priority to substance over protocol”, Mr Mamer stressed.
However, the President of the Commission is not ready to forget this incident. “She asked her team to make the necessary contacts” with all parties who organised the meeting “to obtain clarification and ensure that this does not happen in the future”, the spokesperson explained. He said that due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Commission President’s protocol team had not visited Turkey.
Asked whether this incident could be gender-related, Mr Mamer recalled that Ms von der Leyen was in Ankara as president of a European institution. When we talk about protocol, we are talking about relations between institutions and not between individuals, he added. According to Mr Mamer, “the fact of being a man or a woman does not change the fact that she should have been seated in the same protocol as the other two participants”. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)