Von der Leyen won't run for a third term. Or will she?

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**Zoya Sheftalovich** (0:30)
Good morning, it's Wednesday, June 17, and this is the Brussels Playbook Podcast.
The vibe in Brussels today is successioneering, as denials of a third von der Leyen term only seem to fuel more speculation about one.
Also on the pod, the US and Iran seem to have had a peace deal, but the energy crisis isn't over yet. And there's a new social media platform in town, W. It markets itself as being made in Europe. Is that elevator pitch enough to make it take off? I'm Zoya Sheftalovich, and with me today is our Senior EU Politics Editor, Ian Wishart. Hey Ian.

**Ian Wishart** (1:10)
Good morning, Zoya. Have you got here on your e-scooter?

**Zoya Sheftalovich** (1:14)
No, I don't mess around with e-scooters, Ian.

**Ian Wishart** (1:17)
A lot of people do.

**Zoya Sheftalovich** (1:18)
I know, but I'm scared of them. I don't know if I'm more scared of killing myself or someone else.
Anyway, Ian, let's get to our first story. It's fun. It's about Ursula von der Leyen, and more specifically, it's about her plans for a third term or otherwise.

**Ian Wishart** (1:32)
European Commission President, she's a year or two into her second term. What makes us think that she might want a third?

**Zoya Sheftalovich** (1:39)
Well, she is a pretty hard-

**Ian Wishart** (1:42)
Energetic?

**Zoya Sheftalovich** (1:43)
Yes. I was going to say hardcore, but-

**Ian Wishart** (1:45)
Ambitious?

**Zoya Sheftalovich** (1:46)
Ambitious, definitely.

**Ian Wishart** (1:47)
Decisive.

**Zoya Sheftalovich** (1:48)
Oh my God, so many adjectives.
People whom I've spoken to over the past year, and I've asked this question, do we think she's going to run again? What's the plan? Is she going to go be German president? What's happening? People have come back to this idea that this is the job that Ursula von der Leyen was made for. She's got this Brussels pedigree. She was born in Brussels. She's a German politician, big power player in the EPP, and her whole career in politics after she was a medical doctor, her whole career in politics has been geared towards this commission.

**Ian Wishart** (2:21)
She has bridged German domestic politics, and then the EU stage quite well, hasn't she?

**Zoya Sheftalovich** (2:26)
She has.

**Ian Wishart** (2:27)
From what people say.

**Zoya Sheftalovich** (2:28)
Yeah. She runs a very tight ship. Ian, she's got a team around her that is really controlling the narrative here in town. She's got a hand on the tiller of the commission. Very powerful commission president. The most powerful I can remember in a really long time.

**Ian Wishart** (2:42)
So a lot of people are speculating that she might want to run for a third term, but our colleague Gerardo Fortuna has heard that maybe she's thinking about ruling it out. At least unofficially anyway.

**Zoya Sheftalovich** (2:53)
Unofficially, exactly. And this is because, so at the moment, we've been talking about it on the podcast, this restructuring of various commission departments. These are the directorates general, some of them on the chopping block, some of them on the amalgamation block. And at a dinner that had some of the people who might be affected by these changes earlier this month, Ursula von der Leyen's very powerful right-hand man, Bjorn Seibert, he's her chief of cabinet, he reassured them that while maybe they might think that this is part of some sort of centralization push, power grab, that Ursula von der Leyen wasn't intending to stick around for a third term.

**Ian Wishart** (3:28)
Weird reassurance though, don't worry about it. She's not going to be here in a couple of years.

**Zoya Sheftalovich** (3:32)
Well, he was trying to explain that like, this isn't a power grab, she's not trying to like enjoy the fruits of getting rid of all of your jobs and, you know, seeing an unprecedented third term, because we should say that there hasn't actually been a commission president who served three terms. No, it's not a rule. They could technically.

**Ian Wishart** (3:49)
And she's still a relatively young woman.

**Zoya Sheftalovich** (3:51)