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(Bloomberg) — From the 13th floor of the European Commission’s sprawling headquarters in Brussels, Ursula von der Leyen has fought to push and prod the world’s largest trading bloc forward, but those efforts are now in jeopardy.

As pressure grows on the European Union from the outside, another sign of trouble recently hit close to home. Circulating the 1960s office complex was a polling map that indicated support for the bloc is faltering in her native Germany, part of a broader backlash against the power amassing in Brussels.

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The 65-year-old came to Brussels five years ago with a plan to make the EU a proper geopolitical player. The Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine accelerated the agenda, and in centralizing authority, she upset senior officials and opened a line of attack for populists set on weakening the bloc from the inside. 

As a new term as commission president hangs in the balance, her future is intertwined with the dilemmas facing the patchwork of 450 million people. And the process poses a key question: how much power are the EU’s 27 members states willing to give to Brussels.

Founded with the goal of stabilizing Europe through trade, the EU is at a turning point. China has become a systemic rival and the US is no longer seen as a reliable guarantor of Europe’s peace and prosperity — even if Donald Trump doesn’t win the presidential election in November. That’s pushing the bloc to reinvent itself and find ways of imposing its economic and political weight on an increasingly polarized world stage.

While the Brussels-born daughter of a German politician may soon publicly declare her plan to seek a second term, a final decision will only be made by EU leaders after European elections in June — when populist parties could secure more power and prompt a rethink.

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“No one can doubt that her leadership and the ‘whatever it takes’ attitude helped us,” said Dita Charanzova, a vice president of the European Parliament from the Czech Republic and a member of the rival liberals group. “If re-appointed, she should put more emphasis on communication with citizens in order to regain their trust.”

Her relations across the bloc are mixed. The German conservative works well with both Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Spain’s Pedro Sanchez — despite them being at different points on the political spectrum. Hungary’s Viktor Orban distrusts her, while ties with Germany’s Olaf Scholz are complicated by infighting in his coalition, according to people close to the EU’s inner workings. 

There are also still bruises in European Parliament over the deal that brought von der Leyen to power and upended plans to appoint the lead candidate from the biggest caucus, according to a European lawmaker. In 2019, that would have been Bavarian conservative Manfred Weber, the leader of her political family in the chamber.  

Testy relations with European Council President Charles Michel have been a topic in Brussels ever since the so-called Sofagate incident in 2021, when the former Belgian prime minister took the only chair at a meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in what was seen as a snub to von der Leyen. 

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Read More: Rift at Top Exposes EU Struggle to Keep Pace With Global Powers 

Michel backtracked last week on earlier plans to step down if elected to the bloc’s parliament, reflecting the pressure over EU top jobs and the horse-trading that accompanies such posts. In a sign of the competition, the names of Christine Lagarde and Mario Draghi — the current and former heads of the European Central Bank — have been quietly circulating as potential successors for von der Leyen.

“It will be crucial for her to use the time before the elections to counter the self-inflicted negative perceptions,” said Steven Blockmans, senior research fellow at CEPS think tank. “This will be no easy task.”

Amid the vanities and power struggles, one idea emerges with clarity: von der Leyen’s second term would be even more complicated. 

Alongside supporting Ukraine against Russia and navigating the conflict in Gaza, the EU needs to prevent getting squeezed between the US and China, while also countering toxic dependencies on energy and raw materials needed for its green and digital transitions. Finite funding and the challenges of rolling out climate initiatives and Covid-recovery programs make internal conflict all but guaranteed, while the bloc relaunches a difficult enlargement process to the east under Moscow’s watch.

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After winning confirmation by the narrowest margin in the EU’s history, von der Leyen positively surprised many. In gathering more power than any of her predecessors, her assertive approach was critical to imposing unprecedented sanctions on Russia. 

But she also stumbled. One serious blunder threatened peace in Ireland by reintroducing the possibility of border checks on the island. More recently, she faced criticism for supporting Israel against Hamas without calling for the country to respect international law and protect civilians. Her Green Deal sowed anxiety that is being exploited by the far right — not least in Germany. 

By relying on a close-knit group of aides from Berlin, the former German defense minister irked commissioners and high-ranking bureaucrats in Brussels, said EU officials, asking not to be identified discussing private conversations. Her style is not sustainable, said one senior diplomat.

Von der Leyen seeks to identify solutions to problems first and then focus on the legal underpinnings and political backing, said a commission official. The EU executive would probably have worked differently if the Covid pandemic didn’t hit almost from the start and required very quick decisions, the official added.

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The headwinds facing von der Leyen are evident for many in the European capital. While some are concerned about the budgetary constraints or policy backlashes, others warn of the spread of the far right. In Germany, voter surveys show the anti-euro Alternative for Germany, or AfD, leading in the former communist east and some pockets of the country’s industrial heartland.

Read More: The Far Right Is on the Rise in Germany and Scholz Is at a Loss

Across von der Leyen’s homeland, support for the party — which calls the EU a “failed project” — is a strong second after her conservatives and soundly ahead of Chancellor Scholz’s Social Democrats. A recent upswell of mass anti-AfD protests further underscore concerns over rising German nationalism.

Von der Leyen experienced the tension first hand earlier this month. While speaking to a business group in northern Germany, her visit got embroiled in demonstrations against cuts in agricultural subsidies by Scholz’s coalition.

“You will have noticed that it is rather loud outside,” the commission president said, as tractors blocked roadways in Lower Saxony — the state her father led for nearly 15 years. 

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Read More: Agrarians at the Gate Lead Revolt Against German Government

Just days after witnessing internal fault lines, she laid out the geopolitical threats in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos. As crises compound and overlap, “there is no doubt that we face the greatest risk to the global order in the post-war era,” she said.

After becoming the surprise nominee following a back-room agreement between French President Emmanuel Macron and then German Chancellor Angela Merkel, von der Leyen has driven the EU’s agenda. She turned the commission into a powerful representative of Europe on the world stage and that is a strength, said a senior EU diplomat.

But in certain ways, she still has the airs of a Brussels outsider. Instead of finding a home, the mother of seven stays in converted office space at the commission’s headquarters. Her current status raises echoes of when she returned to the city of her birth and sought to rally support and solidarity. 

“If we are to go down the European path, we must first rediscover our unity,” she told EU lawmakers ahead of her confirmation vote in 2019. “If we are united on the inside, nobody will divide us from the outside.”

—With assistance from Patrick Donahue.

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