Von der Leyen, Costa and Mesola took private jet to Luxembourg event

Ursula von der Leyen, António Costa and Roberta Metsola flew together on a private plane from Brussels to attend an event in Luxembourg last week, an extraordinary, high-cost decision made due to scheduling constraints between the three presidents, a spokesperson for the Commission said today.

The trio were expected to appear jointly in the city to commemorate Europe Day.

The trip took place on Friday and saw the presidents of the European Commission, the European Council and the European Parliament visit the Robert Schuman house, accompanied by Luxembourgish Prime Minister Luc Frieden.

The rationale for flying rather than driving to Luxembourg – roughly 200 km from Brussels – was mainly prompted by the appearance of Friedrich Merz, the new Chancellor of Germany, in the Belgian capital.

Merz chose Europe Day to make his first visit to Brussels since taking office. He met separately with Costa, von der Leyen and Metsola, in that order, and held press conferences with Costa and von der Leyen, taking questions from journalists.

The bilateral meetings stretched over the entire morning, leaving the three presidents with an extremely tight itinerary to move to Luxembourg City and attend the commemorative event, pencilled for early afternoon, at the same time.

The teams in Brussels then chose to ditch the car option and resort to air charter, the costs of which were shared among the three institutions.

“Due to the scheduling constraints of the three presidents and the prime minister, the only travelling option to allow all of them to attend the commemoration of the Schuman Declaration together and on time was to take a charter flight,” Paula Pinho, the Commission’s chief spokesperson, said on Monday.

“This is the reason why, exceptionally, this was the option taken to get there.”

The offices of Costa and Metsola voiced a similar message.

The event in Luxembourg, hosted at the prime minister’s invitation to mark the 75th anniversary of the Schuman Declaration, started in the early afternoon and lasted about two hours. The four leaders visited the house where Robert Schuman, the French politician who delivered the declaration on 9 May 1950, grew up.

Schuman’s proposal to create a new authority to manage the production of coal and steel from France and West Germany paved the way for the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and kick-started the project of European integration.

Luxembourg was one of the six founding members of the ECSC and served as host of the independent High Authority, the precursor of the European Commission. During Friday’s trip, the four leaders also visited the old seat of the High Authority.

Once the event was over, von der Leyen and Costa returned to Brussels using the rented plane while Metsola and her team flew commercial to Cyprus.

Although air flights are frequent for long-distance travel, using the same option for such a short-distance trip is likely to raise eyebrows, given the EU’s commitment to sustainability and the pressure from member states to control expenses.