Who would have guessed EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen would be left so starstruck from her encounter with British pop star Dua Lipa.
After meeting the 26 year-old at the Atlantic Council leadership awards, VDL tweeted a picture of the pair with the gushing message: “Dua, you have such a great impact on the world. With your music and your unique energy, we are all ‘levitating’.”
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One wonders what these two girlbosses might have bonded over. If a Politico report is anything to do by, then VDL’s musical interests aren’t too aligned with the synth heavy disco-pop featured on Lipa’s most recent album ‘Future Nostalgia’. During her early twenties, VDL spent a year living in London where she would hit up punk concerts and was particularly “fond of the Buzzcocks.”
Her taste must have evolved. Or could it be that conversation instead turned to EU-West Balkan relations?
The singer’s parents moved to the UK from Pristina and Lipa herself spent a brief part of her own childhood living there, following Kosovo’s Declaration of Independence in 2008.
In July of last year, Lipa wore her heritage on her chest as she tweeted a map of Albania, Kosovo and parts of neighbouring Balkan countries with the caption: “au•toch•tho•nous adjective (of an inhabitant of a place) indigenous rather than descended from migrants or colonists”.
This was met with considerable backlash and Lipa soon posted a follow up statement that she “never meant to incite any hate.” She insisted: “I simply want my country to be represented on a map”.
What this new Lipa-Commission partnership might mean for EU member states’ patchy recognition of Kosovo, its ascension (or maybe now ‘Levitation’?) to the EU or indeed, whether Ms Lipa will be invited to the European Parliament’s next EU-Kosovo Stabilisation and Association Parliamentary Committee (SAPC) is unclear.
