‘She’s pretty much alone’: The EU’s greenest leader fights the tide

It was, like Ribera’s first seven months in office, a compromise born of the changed political reality — a reality she has tried to both resist and work within.

This account of that time is based on interviews with 11 Commission and government officials, associates of Ribera and close observers of the EU. Many were hesitant to speak to journalists about Ribera, who fiercely values privacy and loyalty, so they were granted anonymity. POLITICO has also interviewed Ribera three times in that span. 

Allies and critics alike described Ribera as isolated, lacking political allies amid losses among her fellow social democrats, and facing attacks from outside and inside the Commission. Despite this, they said, she has racked up a series of quiet victories.

With populist and illiberal parties incorporating the fight against climate change into their story of grievance, the stakes, as Ribera sees them, are wider than the EU’s green goals. Almost religious. Certainly moral. 

“Today, like never before, the green agenda … is being questioned,” she wrote in an emotionally charged letter to El País two days after Pope Francis died. This “counter-reformation,” she added, must be faced down lest the world “return to dark times.”

You’re hired

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen knew exactly what she was getting when she asked Ribera to protect the EU’s embattled green ambitions.