The Brief – How Ursula von der Leyen’s pet project fell flat

The New European Bauhaus, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s pet project, has failed spectacularly, and it is mostly her own fault. 

In 2019, the Bauhaus movement – a world-changing new approach to art and architecture – celebrated its 100th anniversary. One year later, no doubt inspired by all the media attention, von der Leyen launched a successor: the “New European Bauhaus”.

It was to be the “soul” of her flagship project, the Green Deal: climate action and nature protection. The Bauhaus had introduced practicality into design while her new Bauhaus would make design beautiful, inclusive, and sustainable. 

Four years later, has anything been achieved? And can the new Bauhaus survive without her executive backing, should she not manage to win a second term?

Today, the new Bauhaus counts “almost 500 projects in total,” dwarfed by the 1,400 members of the “community” – which can be anyone, from NGOs and industry associations to project holders. 

Some of these members are quite unusual, like the China-based bamboo industry association INBAR. Yet, the European Commission says the members have reached “several millions of Europeans”. 

In exchange, €380 million has been committed to the project hitherto, and €95 million of that money was spent on 20 lighthouse “demonstrator projects.” From 2025, an extra €120 million per annum will be spent on the new Bauhaus until 2027. 

Exemplarily, that money has been spent on building a ”NEBourhood” community in Munich – one of the wealthiest regions in Europe. Another one, based in Denmark, quizzes pupils about what makes a circular economy desirable. 

Projects for an urban “woke” elite, some will say.

“What the new Bauhaus did not manage to do was to reach a broad spectrum of people,” says Ruth Schagemann, president of the EU’s architect association ACE. 

Unsurprising for a movement sparked by a political impulse, translated into a concept by a group of cultural elites in 2021 with a heavy emphasis on “indigenous understandings of technology” and “radical indigenism”. 

Rather than being birthed from radical change like its predecessor – Germany had just transitioned from monarchy to democracy at the time –  the new Bauhaus is a mere mirror to cultural discourse and when the cultural tides change, they may drown the project. 

None will be sadder than its creator. Belgian PM Alexander De Croo once told her: “It is clear how much you love the New European Bauhaus”, although her enthusiasm will have been another reason it failed to stick, in hindsight. 

Von der Leyen was engrossed with the concept. So much so that she sprung it onto the EU, forgoing the traditional feelers the Berlaymont normally puts out before making big announcements. 

This immediately irked the not so rich newer EU countries, where the Soviet school of the Bauhaus had ensured that the term was more closely tied to constricted, close-quarter housing than the beauty von der Leyen hoped to evoke. 

Countries like Bulgaria and Poland had their feathers ruffled from the outset, something the German politician failed to anticipate.

Then came staffing issues. At the start, the new Bauhaus was supported by a skeleton team from the EU’s research division. Serious personnel backing didn’t come before the initiative’s first birthday.

In the background, architects, who saw little need for a new Bauhaus in the first place, were fuming. “Among architects, the topic was the subject of controversial debate,” says Schagemann. The profession is split along traditional fault lines: progressives and conservatives. 

Architecture expert Jürgen Tiez said that learning from history “does not mean proclaiming a new Bauhaus via Instagram and Pinterest, but humbly continuing to build.”

Another architect, Hans Kollhoff, slammed the initiative with “Don’t act so green, it still remains consumer capitalism.”

The lack of funding contributed to the movement’s woes: To move Europe’s built environment, valued at €15 trillion, requires unprecedented cultural momentum or more money than the paltry €700 million allocated to the new Bauhaus.

But perhaps its biggest downfall? It is not that beautiful.

Brussels residents may have encountered the New European Bauhaus for the first time this April. As part of the movement’s annual festival, hedgehog-like structures and hastily erected, rickety constructions popped up at the sprawling Parc du Cinquantenaire, seemingly overnight.

Most visitors will have been distracted by the fact that along with the festival, there came a welcome pop-up bar in the arches, offering a glorious view of the park. Rightly so, for there was not much else to see.

The exhibits themselves revealed the second flaw: ideological confusion. 

The new Bauhaus wanted to do too much at a time – fix climate change, discrimination, and a lack of beauty often attributed to the original Bauhaus. 

As a result, its projects are all over the place, they lack a consistent vision and are hard to distinguish from other “woke” projects.

But von der Leyen is unwilling to let it go – and history may prove her right: Perhaps Europeans are yet to rediscover how to interact with their built environment, and the new Bauhaus will be the tool whereby we rediscover what it means to live.

Or, as Schagemann cautioned: “The narrative of adapting the built environment … has not yet found a place in society, so we are at the beginning of the process.”

Meanwhile, until this society-wide debate gains traction, the Commission president wants to work on fashion, which she hopes will be easier.

“The highly agile and innovative fashion industry is well-placed to lead the way, so let’s show the world that beauty and sustainability can go hand in hand,” von der Leyen said in early April.

Subtext: buildings are neither highly agile nor innovative, and the new Bauhaus ship almost capsized. Hopefully, the fashion industry will be more receptive to ideas like “indigenous understandings of technology”.

The Roundup

In October 2023, mobility company Bolt, headquartered in Estonia, offered to draft a letter on behalf of the Estonian government to push back against the platform work directive, addressing a government official who used to work for Bolt.

Despite the European Commission’s hopes to launch a brand new European Defence Industry Programme (EDIP) by 2025, the first rounds of negotiations and exchanges have pushed the deadline by at least six months, people involved in the discussions told Euractiv.

The European Parliament adopted the reform of the EU’s rules for national debt and deficits on Tuesday, despite fears from left-wing MEPs that it will lead to a new wave of austerity and prevent green investments.

The European Commission will push ahead with plans to simplify member states’ auditing and control procedures for the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) payments despite recent allegations of fraud, top Commission officials told EU lawmakers on Monday.

The criminalisation of forced marriage, illegal adoption, and exploitation of surrogacy have been added to the scope of a directive to prevent human trafficking and protect victims, as voted by the European Parliament on Tuesday.

Despite a series of “historic crises”, the EU economy is “stronger than five years ago”, European Commission President von der Leyen told EU lawmakers on Tuesday, touting her successes as she seeks another five-year mandate.

In the last two decades in Europe, extreme heat-related mortality has increased by around 30%, according to a joint report by the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) and the UN’s World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) published on Tuesday.

The European Parliament approved on Tuesday the EU’s broadband act, the Gigabit Infrastructure Act (GIA), which aims to accelerate the deployment of high-capacity networks and reduce prices for consumers.

After being accused of receiving money through a Russian propaganda network, German far-right lead candidate Maximilian Krah (AfD) is involved in another scandal, with one of his European Parliament assistants arrested on suspicion of spying for China.

For a roundup of transport-related news, check out this week’s Transport Brief.

Look out for…

• Informal meeting of health ministers, Tuesday-Wednesday.
• European Parliament’s final plenary in Strasbourg Monday-Thursday.
• Commissioner Kadri Simson participates at World Energy Council’s roundtable ‘Grids for Speed- driving expansion and digitalisation of electricity grids in Europe’ on Wednesday.
• Commissioner Stella Kyriakides participates in launch event of Critical Medicines Alliance on Wednesday.
• Commission Vice President Maroš Šefčovič meets with French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire, Minister in Paris on Wednesday.

Views are the author’s

[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic/Rajnish Singh]