EU chief Ursula von der Leyen will miss a session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, including a speech by France’s President Emmanuel Macron, after a possible Covid exposure, she said Monday.
The president of the European Commission had been due to attend several meetings at the assembly’s Strasbourg seat for its first full session of the year and of France’s six-month EU presidency.
“My driver has tested positive for Covid-19. Regretfully, I must therefore cancel my participation … I am returning to Brussels,” she tweeted.
Von der Leyen’s decision, in line with current Belgian coronavirus regulations, also means that she will not be able to attend in person a meeting of her college of commissioners scheduled for Tuesday in Strasbourg.
But the political highlights of the week will be tributes to the parliament’s late president, Italian social democrat David Sassoli, who passed away in hospital last week, and the MEPs’ election of his successor in the speaker’s chair.
It will also be a set-piece event of France’s EU presidency, and unofficially of Macron’s re-election campaign, with the French leader addressing MEPs on Wednesday on his vision for the future of the union.
