Why is Ursula von der Leyen still talking about Sofagate?

Almost a month has passed since the now infamous ‘sofa-gate’ incident where, during a meeting with Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan, Ursula von der Leyen was not provided with a chair. Instead she was forced to sit on a nearby sofa. And yet it is this event – rather than Europe’s ongoing vaccine woes – that seems to be at the forefront of the president of the European Commission’s thoughts.

Von der Leyen used a speech given to the European Parliament to reiterate accusations of sexism over sofa-gate. The president did everything she could to drive home her feminist message, concluding that: 

‘I am the president of the European commission. And this is how I expected to be treated when visiting Turkey two weeks ago, like, a commission president – but I was not.’

You only need to imagine a man saying those words to realise how grating they actually are.