Ideational agenda-setting leadership: President von der Leyen and the EU response to the invasion of Ukraine

Abstract This article presents an ideational perspective on agenda-setting leadership, which it applies to the role played by President von der Leyen in the EU’s response to the crisis that followed the Russian full-scale military invasion of Ukraine that started on 24 February 2022. On a conceptual and methodological level, by searching for evidence of strategic framing, this study traces the process of President von der Leyen’s ideational agenda-setting leadership and how it influenced the overall development of the EU’s response during the initial ten weeks of the crisis. The empirical findings contribute to the academic debate on the Commission President’s leadership in a crisis context by revealing how her principled ideas enabled her to diagnose the situation precisely and devise clear priorities and tools to address it. The empirical analysis also suggests that President von der Leyen, in line with her geopolitical Commission, played a very active foreign policy role.