Ursula von der Leyen

Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen (de; née Albrecht; born 8 October 1958) is a German politician and physician serving as president of the European Commission since 2019. She served in the German federal government between 2005 and 2019, holding positions in Angela Merkel's cabinet.

Von der Leyen was born and raised in Brussels, Belgium, to German parents. Her father, Ernst Albrecht, was one of the first European civil servants. She was brought up bilingually in German and French, and moved to Germany in 1971 when her father became involved in German politics. She graduated from the London School of Economics in 1978, and in 1987, she acquired her medical licence from Hanover Medical School. After marrying physician Heiko von der Leyen, she lived for four years in the United States with her family in the 1990s. After returning to Germany she became involved in local politics in the Hanover region in the late 1990s, and she served as a cabinet minister in the state government of Lower Saxony from 2003 to 2005.

On 2 July 2019, von der Leyen was proposed by the European Council as the candidate for president of the European Commission.^[1][2] She was then elected by the European Parliament on 16 July, becoming the first woman to hold the office.^[3] She was named the most powerful woman in the world by Forbes in 2022, 2023 and 2024.^[4][5][6]

On 18 July 2024, von der Leyen was re-elected as President of the European Commission by the European Parliament with an absolute majority of 401 members of the European Parliament out of 720.^[7]

• Official Site of Ursula von der Leyen Archived 2011-02-21 at the Wayback Machine (in German)