Ursula breaks the silence: “There I felt lonely. I’ve never looked like in Ankara”

I felt “lonely” as a “president”, “woman” and “European”. Ursula von der Leyen It breaks the silence and returns to the “Sofa Gate” issue, the diplomatic clash that arose after visiting Ankara, when the European Commission president was left without a seat while Charles Michel and Recep Tayyip Erdogan sat on their seats next to another.

Once the photos became public, a large portion of European parties protested the treatment to which von der Leyen was subjected, which were deemed harmful to her image. Charges were immediately brought against them Erdogan, According to many, he is guilty of not preventing the embarrassment. The blame was mainly directed at Michel who did nothing to avoid the idiot, but rather accepted the Turkish president’s invitation to sit while the other EU leader remained standing and then was invited to sit on the sofa opposite the Turkish foreign minister.

A scene that blatantly demonstrated some of the serious shortcomings of European institutions. First of all, the inability to react in a potentially explosive situation for the image in front of the world. But in the final analysis, the European double-headed problem without a leader is discovered, where one does not even know how to manage protocol Joint between two institutions must cooperate. It is an image that von der Leyen and Michel will never forget, so much so, he says AdnKronosThe two Presidents returned to talk about it to Conference of Presidents of the European Parliament After that was already a topic First clarification. Michel, according to the sources, would have asked “several times” to apologize for the gesture. But it does not seem that von der Leyen can pose the question in this simple way, so much so that in addition to speaking of embarrassment, he has also cited Articles 15 and 17 of the TEU, those that accord equal dignity to the Commission and the Council. The two presidents have formally promised to “move forward together” and so it will be very different after Ankara: But something has broken the already delicate balance between the two leaders who often express their weakness.