BRUSSELS — As the European Union’s importance on the world stage grows, its politics are fragmenting: Smaller, more ideological parties, including populists and nationalists, have made gains and weakened the traditional, more centrist parties. How have the bloc’s leaders responded? By calling on strong consensus builders to head up its key institutions. The first woman to lead the E.U.’s huge bureaucracyGermany’s center-right defense minister, Ursula von der Leyen, will be returning to the city of her birth, Brussels, once she’s confirmed to lead the European Union’s most important institution and her father’s former workplace: the European Commission. A medical doctor and economist by training, she is a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats.

Source: International New York Times July 02, 2019 20:37 UTC