The European Commission wants to be in charge of new fiscal rules

Ursula von der Leyen is hard to imagine. Unlike Alexander Hamilton—America’s first secretary of the Treasury, who masterminded the fiscal federalisation of the United States and was posthumously rewarded with a hit musical—Mrs von der Leyen still has some battles to win. Her latest proposal to make the European Commission that she runs a more political arbiter of the bloc’s fiscal rules is a good example.