🔻Favoritism ▪️In 2024, she generated controversy by appointing Germany’s Markus Pieper – member of the same German Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party as her – to the lucrative position of EU Envoy for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SME). ▪️Pieper’s CDU membership,

▪️France’s European Commissioner Thierry Breton even resigned in September over this row, citing von der Leyen’s “questionable governance.” 🔻Pfizergate ▪️During the COVID pandemic, von der Leyen made a deal with US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla to purchase 1.8

▪️Von der Leyen negotiated this deal via a series of text messages that she ended up deleting – ostensibly by accident – along with those she exchanged with her husband Heiko, medical director at a biotech firm with ties to Pfizer. ▪️As a result, von der Leyen was accused of

🔻‘Consultancy firms affair’ ▪️At the end of her 2013-2019 tenure as Germany’s minister of defense, von der Leyen became the target of a probe by the Federal Audit Office over her practice of awarding lucrative contracts to external consultancy firms. ▪️In its 2018 report, the

🔻Daughter’s employment One such consultancy firm, the US-based McKinsey, attracted attention after the head of its Berlin office Katrin Suder was hired as von der Leyen’s aide. While the firm ended up receiving contracts worth millions of euros from the Defense Ministry, von