Ursula von der Leyen has been at the helm of the European Commission since 2019. The 65-year-old is the first woman to hold the presidency of the EU executive branch. But despite being of retirement age, the German center-right politician isn't hanging up hat her just yet.

On February 19, she announced her bid to secure another five-year term, which would keep her in office until 2029. Von der Leyen has unfinished business: the transition to EU "climate neutrality," for example, and shepherding Ukraine's hoped-for accession to the 27-member bloc.

"I think Ursula von der Leyen has done a good job," her predecessor, the Luxembourger Jean-Claude Juncker, said late last year. "I know her job and its difficulties," he told German radio broadcaster Deutschlandfunk. "It is not only the most important EU job around, it is also the hardest. Not everyone is up to it. But she is."

Von der Leyen, a former German defense minister, went public with her plans at a Berlin meeting of her domestic political party, the conservative Christian Democratic Union. She will likely secure nomination as the European People's Party's (EPP) candidate for the presidency at an upcoming Budapest convention in two weeks' time. The center-right, 83-party, pan-European EPP bloc currently holds the most seats in the European Parliament.

But due to the way EU politics work, von der Leyen won't run a direct electoral campaign to........

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