With just a few days to go before her State of the European Union (EU) address to the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Wednesday, September 13, Ursula von der Leyen is increasing her contacts with heads of state, diplomats and MEPs. For the president of the Commission, this address, which will be the last of its kind before the European elections in June 2024 and the end of her term of office, is of particular importance. It will be a time for taking stock, but also an opportunity to lay the groundwork if, in the coming weeks, she were to officialize her candidacy for a second term official.

Despite this busy schedule, Angela Merkel's former minister took time out on Monday, September 4 to tackle an unexpected subject – to announce a possible reassessment of the protection status of wolves in Europe. "The concentration of wolf packs in certain European regions has become a real danger for livestock and, potentially, for humans," she explained in a press release.

While it is very difficult to assess the number of wolves present on the Old Continent, the Commission is calling on "local communities, scientists and all interested parties to submit, by September 22, updated data on wolf populations and their impacts." The EU executive could then decide to "modify, if necessary, the protection status of the wolf in the EU [dating from 1992]."

Von der Leyen certainly has a bone to pick with wolves: in September 2022, one of them broke into her family property in northern Germany and killed her old pony, Dolly. "The whole family is terribly upset," she said at the time. But this alone cannot explain the sudden need to take up the subject. After a debate in the European Parliament on wolf protection in November 2022, "the Commission undertook to study the subject and submit its conclusions by the end of 2023," explained one spokesperson.

"This is a political maneuver in which von der Leyen is pandering to her EPP political family [European People's Party]," commented Greens party European lawmaker Benoît Biteau. For the past year, the EPP conservatives, led by Germany's Manfred Weber, have wanted to put a stop to the European Green Deal, which von der Leyen, a member of their ranks, has made the spearhead of her policy since 2019. After voting for some thirty bills designed to put the EU on the road to carbon neutrality by 2050, they have undergone a veritable ideological transformation, arguing that the war in Ukraine and the resurgence of inflation are changing the game.

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