| The European Parliament may have given Ursula von der Leyen’s college of commissioners a nod with a timid margin, but don’t be fooled: ‘Queen Ursula’ has more power than ever before. The College, as it has been approved by lawmakers earlier on Wednesday (27 November), is “the right team for this moment in Europe’s history,” von der Leyen said minutes after the vote. Because it is a victory for her, too. The approval paves the way for von der Leyen's near-total power over the College, diluting responsibilities where necessary for the power balance to work in her favour. It also sees her political family EPP largely reinforced in the European Parliament. That the College passed with the thinnest margin in 30 years – with 370 votes in favour to 282 against – takes nothing away from the fact that she now has free reign to push through the files and reforms as she pleases. “Von der Leyen was the most clever of all,” Renaissance delegation (Renew) President Marie-Pierre Vedrenne told Euractiv before the vote. She and centre-right EPP's top man Manfred Weber outmanoeuvred their other two partners from the historic ‘central’ coalition after a week of nail-biting political negotiations over Commission executive vice-president (EVP) positions – ending up in nothing more than minor tweaks to a handful of portfolios. Weber has offered the social democrats (S&D) and the liberal Renew Europe group a ‘platform agreement’ (imagine a coalition agreement, but non-binding and badly written) in exchange for a College as von der Leyen first introduced it. One that would see hard-right Raffaele Fitto (ECR), a member of the Italian post-fascist Fratelli d’Italia party, take on a Commission EVP role. | 