The French and Germans don't seem best pleased about what she's done, and we can see why. There might be several theses or lines of thought on this.
- It's easy to portray it as craven, but it's solid realpolitik, and shows the EC** in a good light: their strategic priorities (bind USA into European defence / maintain support for Ukraine / stay on reasonable talking terms with Trump) were clear and they did the necessary in a decisive & fairly expeditious way.
- It's an existential triumph for the EC qua bureaucracy-priesthood, not only on the basis of 1 above, but because von der Leyen's people roundly ignored the national governments and have got clean away with it. German & French vetoes? They're history.
- It's a tactical triumph for those wily EC negotiators: their preferred stratagem is to grind down the other side by dragging negotiations out into endless detail / prevarication / cherry-picking / make-believe governance issues (see Brexit); but when faced with an emergency, they still came up with the goods. Knowing that Trump just lurves Big Numbers and of course Done Deals, they've "committed" to bizarre amounts of imports from the USA, and there isn't a cat's chance in Hell that these commitments can be honoured. But the Dumb Donald goes home with his triumph (his own people certainly ain't gonna tell him he's been suckered - and maybe he knows it anyway but just loves the immediate optics) and life carries on.
- It suits DE and FR to bellyache and blame von der Leyen, but they know there was little alternative, and have let her do the deed - & front for it. (But where, ultimately, does 'strategic bellyaching' lead? Surely, only an ever-growing Euroscepticism across the whole continent?)
ND
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** I.e. the very real Brussels priesthood, not the abstract political entity known as the EU