Indeed, just as the CEOs were pouring out their woes to the Commission president, a few floors below, Teresa Ribera, commissioner for a clean industrial transition, was presenting the bloc’s climate targets for 2040.
Von der Leyen’s center-right European People’s Party is widely accused of watering down the EU’s environmental agenda to help preserve competitiveness, and the German visitors seemed satisfied she was alive to their interests.
The Commission president was “listening very closely to the details,” said Hendrik Wüst, the minister-president of the industrial powerhouse region of North Rhine-Westphalia, who accompanied the CEOs. “We have passed along quite a lot of good subjects to President von der Leyen, who will also support competitiveness,” he added. “We have received quite a strong signal from her.”
Wüst hails from von der Leyen’s party in Germany, the Christian Democratic Union within the EPP’s group.
Industry representatives from other EU member countries haven’t been as lucky. Confindustria, the Italian business confederation, told POLITICO that Italian industry leaders never get that kind of facetime with the president.
But the Germans paraded their ease of access. Markus Steilemann, chief executive of chemicals company Covestro, told POLITICO this wasn’t the first time he had met the Commission’s top official. There have been “numerous occasions,” he said, ascribing it to his “numerous accountabilities within the European chemical industry, within the German chemical industry, but also as a CEO.”
