Meet Europe's New Leaders

No one is writing about this, so it is probably worth your attention. Over in Europe, as the European Union disintegrates, the continent has chosen new leaders. One is former German Defense Minister, Ursula von der Leyen, named president of the European Commission. Another is Christine Lagarde, currently leader of the International Monetary Fund, soon to be the head of the European Central Bank.

So far, so good.

But, what do we know about these new leaders of the new Europe. If we live in America, not very much. Yet, the Daily Mail-- what would we do without it?-- fills us in.

Just what we need for the day after the day that commemorates our separation from Great Britain.

Ursula von der Leyen ... proved a lamentable Defence Minister in her native Germany, hardly inspire[s] confidence….

Fighter jets and helicopters that don’t fly, warships and submarines that cannot put out to sea, guns that miss the target when they get too hot, and a lack of everything from ammunition to underwear.

That, it is claimed, is the parlous state of the German Army under the tenure of the country’s Defence Minister and now President of the European Commission.

One can only wonder how she got the job of Defense Minister. As for her record, there’s more:

Indeed, Von der Leyen, who in 2013 was appointed as the first female Defence Minister, has only united German politicians across the political divide in questioning her suitability for her new role.

One described her as ‘the weakest member’ of the German government and others call her ‘the soloist’ owing to her tendency to act on her own without consulting others.

‘No matter where you look, there’s dysfunction,’ a senior German officer at Bundeswehr HQ told the Politico website.

Last December, Von der Leyen was called before a parliamentary committee to answer charges over alleged poor handling of defence contracts, which in some cases involved suspected nepotism.

In one scandal, the costs of repairing a naval training vessel spiralled from 10 million to 135 million euros.

The Bundestag is currently holding hearings into accusations that Von der Leyen’s office circumvented public procurement rules in granting contracts worth millions of euros to private firms.

As for Christine Lagarde, current head of the International Monetary Fund, it turns out that she has no experience with banking. Apparently, this qualifies her to direct the European Central Bank:

Just before Christmas in 2016, in the very room in the Palais de Justice in Paris where Marie- Antoinette was sentenced to be guillotined, Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund, was found guilty of ‘negligence with public money’ over a multi-million Euro payout to a business tycoon.

Yet, unlike the French queen, Lagarde escaped with barely a slap on the wrist. The court waived a one-year prison sentence and a 15,000 euro fine, on the grounds of her ‘international reputation’ which, cynics might observe, is a rather rum approach to justice.

Lagarde was finance minister in Nicolas Sarkozy’s government in 2007 when she approved a 404million euro payout (£363m) of taxpayers’ money to a controversial French businessman and friend of Sarkozy, Bernard Tapie.

It was a long-running case that revolved around the sale by Tapie of his majority share in sportswear company Adidas to a bank, Credit Lyonnais, part owned by the state.

When the b

ank sold the shares at a higher price, Tapie accused it of defrauding him and the payment was in effect compensation awarded by a private arbitration panel.

Lagarde was convicted for failing to contest the panel’s ruling when there were solid grounds for doing so. She insisted that she had only ever done her duty and may have been misled by civil servants.

The verdict on the high profile case did nothing to dent Lagarde’s career. Within 24 hours, the IMF — Sarkozy had lobbied hard for her to get the job in 2011 — in Washington DC gave her their full backing.

And so she has continued on her trail-blazing way ever since — to her likely new appointment as President of the European Central Bank.

With her penchant for Chanel suits and Hermes scarves, Lagarde is known as the ‘rock star of finance’. But unusually for the putative head of a central bank she has no banking experience.

She herself has acknowledged her limitations in the field, saying in 2012: ‘I’ve studied a bit of economics, but I’m not a super-duper economist.’

Let’s see… she has the requisite quota of corruption and knows nothing about banking. It sounds as though Great Britain is doing the right thing by exiting the European Union.

Considering that Eastern Europe is increasingly being alienated from Western Europe and that the weak sisters of Western Europe are falling all over themselves to prop up the mullahs in Iran… Europe’s new leaders seem inapt to lead, largely inept, like deck hands on a sinking ship.