New EU president to sleep in her office
The EU’s incoming president Ursula von der Leyen plans to live in a tiny flat attached to her Brussels office rather than rent an apartment, her staff told AFP yesterday. The president of the European Commission has no official residence -- a fact that irked von der Leyen’s predecessor Jean-Claude Juncker, who complained to a German newspaper that he was forced to live in a hotel suite at a cost of 3,250 euros ($3,560) a month. Instead von der Leyen is having a 25-square-metre (270-square-foot) room next to her office on the 13th floor of the commission’s Berlaymont building converted so she can sleep there during the week. She followed a similar practice as German defence minister, staying in her Berlin office and returning to her family home near Hanover at weekends.
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