All eyes on Ursula von der Leyen as EU lead candidates get ready to debate
The debate will begin at 19:00 CET in Maastricht, the Netherlands, and mark the first time the lead candidates, or Spitzenkandidaten, confront each other's projects ahead of the elections to the European Parliament in early June. Ursula von der Leyen is all but guaranteed to be the event's centre of attention, as aspirants to her right assail her Green Deal policies and aspirants to her left denounce her party's ever-closer alliance with hard- and far-right forces. For a sitting president, a presidential-like debate will be something of a novelty: over the past five years, von der Leyen has fi...