BRUSSELS — The “presidential” way Ursula von der Leyen runs the European Commission is hurting Europe, according to a former member of her team.

“I have the impression that commissioners are now largely silenced,” Nicolas Schmit, who was the commissioner for jobs and social rights in the first von der Leyen Commission, told POLITICO in an interview.

“The system, how the College is organized — very centralized, call it presidential or whatever system — is not good for the College, it’s not good for the Commission, and it is not good for Europe in general,” he said.

Schmit represented Luxembourg in the Commission from 2019 to 2024 and was the Party of European Socialists’ lead candidate in the 2024 EU election. The Socialists had hoped he could stay on for a second term, but Luxembourg’s government instead nominated Christophe Hansen, from von der Leyen’s own center-right European People’s Party. Schmit is now the president of the Foundation for European Progressive Studies, the PES think tank.

While it is unusual for sitting commissioners to openly criticize von der Leyen, several former members of the College have done so. Michel Barnier used his memoir to accuse his former boss of presiding over an “authoritarian drift” in the Commission. Another former commissioner, Thierry Breton, also said von der Leyen wielded too much power, arguing that Europe “was not built to have an empress or an emperor.”

As a commissioner, Schmit belonged to a faction that challenged some of von der Leyen’s moves from within, including the appointment of a close ally as envoy for small businesses — a move that the European Parliament criticized for a lack of transparency.

He also accused the Commission of lacking long-term vision and strategic planning.

“Did we have a real strategic debate on Europe in the world, which was already a different world from the one we knew before? We did not have a real strategic approach, a real strategy,” he said of von der Leyen’s first term.

A Commission spokesperson declined to comment.

On U.S. relations, Schmit criticized the Commission for not publicly defending former commissioner Breton, who was handed a travel ban by Washington over what it views as unfair efforts to regulate American social media and tech giants. Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier told POLITICO at the time that the College of Commissioners agreed to provide Breton with legal and financial support.

Breton was the commissioner who pushed through and helped enforce the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), a piece of regulation designed to enforce content moderation policies on large online platforms.

Schmit said the laws that the U.S. is unhappy about — regulating digital services and digital markets — were adopted by all 27 commissioners, including von der Leyen, and not by Breton alone.

“This is the point where we should have shown more solidarity and said ‘no, it’s not one, it is all of us.’ But you know, courage is not always shared, including in political spheres,” he said.

Schmit also took aim at the Commission’s deregulation push, which seeks to slash red tape in areas ranging from technology to environment policy through so-called omnibus packages.

He said that although it can take too long to come up with laws, “in just one moment, you can issue this anti-legislation or try to draw back the whole thing.” He said this was “not a good way” to deal with the issue of reducing bureaucracy.

Other figures on the center-left have echoed the criticism. Iratxe García — leader of the Socialists & Democrats group in the Parliament — has likened the deregulation drive to something straight out of the Donald Trump playbook.

The European Ombudsman said in November that the Commission’s handling of the omnibus process had “procedural shortcomings” amounting to “maladministration,” citing the compressed timelines and the speed with which the reforms were drafted.

The Commission has consistently justified the omnibus packages as simplification measures meant to boost competitiveness and cut administrative burdens on businesses.

Nicholas Vinocur contributed to this report.