Interesting 2021 Foreign Policy article linked in this piece, The Aristocratic Ineptitude of Ursula Von Der Leyen that gives insights into the European political leadership as a whole:

But it would be a mistake to blame von der Leyen without understanding the broader failures that installed a person with a middling record in such a powerful position in the first place...she obtained her position through a kind of incestuous, image-obsessed politics that made bungling an inevitability.

Contemporary Germany doesn’t seem like a place where aristocratic titles and family lineages hold much sway... Yet the aristocracy have managed to maintain far more of both its economic and political privileges than is commonly recognized.

...she has always been granted a kind of privilege that far surpasses the parochial advantages accorded to average Germans. Von der Leyen’s family tree traces a legacy of power and brutality, incorporating not only some of Germany’s most significant Nazis but also some of Britain’s largest slave traders and, through marriage, some of the United States’ largest slave owners. Von der Leyen is descended directly from James Ladson, who owned more than 200 slaves when the Civil War broke out.

...the ruling classes that emerged centuries ago continue, at least in some cases, to hold undue influence on European politics. The kinds of family trees that seem to include a shameful number of moral transgressions are still revered by much of the continent’s ruling elite. It’s no accident that French President Emmanuel Macron is commonly cited as having first suggested von der Leyen for the leadership position...At a press conference, Macron praised her “profoundly European culture” before going on to say “she has the DNA of the European community,” referring explicitly to her father’s important role in Europe’s bureaucratic apparatus more than 40 years earlier...Indeed, the power of her connections is evident in the story of how she gained her first regional seat.