Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission (see EUROPE 13551/1), decided, in accordance with protocol, to entrust Executive Vice-President Teresa Ribera with the responsibility of chairing the meeting of the College of Commissioners in Brussels on Wednesday 15 January, as she has not sufficiently recovered from pneumonia.
“President von der Leyen is still at her home in Hanover. She will resume her external commitments at the end of this week, when she will be able to travel”, said the EU institution’s chief spokeswoman, Paula Pinho, on Monday 13 January. Next week, Ms von der Leyen will travel to Davos for the World Economic Forum summit, and to Strasbourg for the plenary session of the European Parliament.
Ms Pinho rejected media criticism of the Commission’s lack of transparency regarding Ms von der Leyen’s actual state of health. We have always said that the pneumonia was “severe” and had forced her to cancel her external commitments, without however preventing her from carrying out her presidential mission, she stressed.
However, last week, despite being questioned by journalists, she did not acknowledge that Ms von der Leyen had been admitted to hospital. On Monday, confirming a report by the German agency DPA, Ms Pinho said that the President of the Commission had been hospitalised from Thursday 2 to Friday 10 January, albeit without respiratory assistance.
On Wednesday, the Commission’s weekly meeting will be devoted to hospital cybersecurity, with the competitiveness package postponed until later in January (see other news). The institution’s spokeswoman stressed that this report was not due to Ms von der Leyen’s state of health, but to the fact that the dossier was not yet ripe.
As for the meeting in Gdańsk between the College and the Polish government, it will now take place on Thursday 6 and Friday 7 February. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)