Oh, what a nice message from Ursula von der Leyen. The President of the European Commission announced via Twitter on 25 October that she had had a nice first telephone conversation with Giorgia Meloni, the new Prime Minister of Italy. Translated from English: ‘We will work together to tackle the important challenges of our time, from Ukraine to energy. I look forward to a first personal meeting in Brussels in the near future.’ The text was accompanied by a photo, taken during that telephone conversation by someone from the von der Leyen team.
There the EC president is on the phone, sitting on a friendly pink couch with orange cushions. A parquet floor, the ficus that just peeps into the picture and a not too expensive, residential-looking rug – clearly an office environment. Inquiries with this paper’s EU correspondent reveal that we are indeed looking at Von der Leyen’s workspace, located on the thirteenth floor of the Berlaymont, the European Commission’s headquarters in Brussels.
Von der Leyen will undoubtedly sit on that bench more often on the phone with politicians, heads of state and presidents. It’s a nice place. Perhaps she chose the sofa fabric herself; it has the same salmon pink color as one of her favorite jackets. But that’s not the point right now.
Nationalist interests
The point is that the President of the European Commission telephoned the Prime Minister of Italy, leader of the radical right-wing party Fratelli d’Italia. She is no longer calling for Italy to leave the European Union, but is still of the opinion that the nationalist interests of her Italian government should be better represented in Brussels.
Ursula von der Leyen didn’t just sit on that pink bench for that phone call. She certainly didn’t have a team member take a photo for social media for fun. Hello, this is politics. This is diplomatic imaging of the highest level.
The evidence immediately hangs over her head: an enlarged print of a historic photo from March 25, 1957. This was the day the Treaty of Rome was signed, which marked the birth of the European Economic Community (EEC). The delegates of Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and West Germany thus laid the foundations for today’s European Union (together with the Paris Treaty establishing the European Coal and Steel Community six years earlier). They met in the Great Hall of the Capitoline Museums in Rome, which features richly decorated wooden doors, sculptures of important popes and 17th-century frescoes by Giuseppe Cesari. Talk about residential.
No one knows who took this photo at the time. I occasionally came across it on the Internet in a post-colorized version, but it’s a good thing they chose the original black-and-white image in Ursula von der Leyen’s office. A colored photo, certainly in combination with that couch, would have looked too kitschy, too trivial. Far too harmless. Now the balance is just right.
Anti-fascist collaboration
Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, is sitting on a pink couch, smiling kindly, and on the phone with Giorgia Meloni, the radical right-wing prime minister of the country where the foundations for European, anti-fascist cooperation were laid almost seventy years ago. . The photo above her head is not only a reference to it, you can also see it as a subtle warning to Meloni.
You belong to us, Giorgia, we are family. We are looking forward to a fantastic collaboration, completely in line with tradition. Just leave the door open for now. So nice to talk to you. Are you coming to Brussels soon?
An earlier version stated that the 17th-century Italian painter’s name was Giuseppe Cesare. This is incorrect: the artist’s name is Giuseppe Cesari.