EU citizens largely unaware or critical of von der Leyen ahead of State of the Union address

Ursula von der Leyen hasn’t won the hearts and minds of EU citizens — if they know her at all.

In a POLITICO poll conducted by pollster Public First across three major EU countries, only about one in five German and Spanish respondents said the Commission president was doing a good job; in France, just 12% said the same.

Nearly one in three respondents in Spain and France, and 45% in Germany, said von der Leyen was doing a bad job. The poor performance review in von der Leyen’s homeland was largely driven by people who said they’d vote for the far-right Alternative for Germany party, with more than half of those voters saying she was doing a “very bad” job.

In France and Spain, far more people said they didn’t consider her performance either good or bad; rather, they either had no opinion one way or the other or had never even heard of her.

More than one in five French respondents said they didn’t know who von der Leyen was, compared with 10% in Spain and just 5% in Germany.

The polling landed just hours before von der Leyen is set to outline her vision of the future of the bloc in her annual State of the Union address.

“Von der Leyen is up against the same anti-political sentiment that has unseated incumbents across the continent, and will have to work hard to convince Europeans that any EU agenda is going to address their widespread concerns about the cost of living,” said Seb Wride, head of polling at Public First, POLITICO’s polling partner.

The polling numbers also showed that few citizens will be following von der Leyen’s speech live.

Across the three countries, around one in 10 said they’d follow the address closely, while about one in three said they’d follow it a little. German respondents were more likely to pay attention to the speech. In Spain and France, more than half reported that they either wouldn’t follow the address despite being aware of it, or had never heard of it.