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| - The EU Commission on Monday said it was a mistake that its chief Ursula von der Leyen appeared in an election video for Croatia's ruling party ahead of Sunday's parliamentary election. Von der Leyen, a former German defence minister, appeared in a campaign spot along with other figures from the EU's centre-right European People's Party. The video also featured Ireland's former prime minister Leo Varadkar, ex-European Council president Donald Tusk and Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz all saying the words "Safe Croatia". Von der Leyen ruffled feathers because during her very short appearance, she spoke in front of an EU flag in a corridor of the commission headquarters, as she does in official EU videos. "With her show of partisanship, she is gambling away trust and thereby damaging the office," senior German MEP Jens Geier told AFP. Like all European Commissioners, Von der Leyen is bound by a code of conduct which requires that she does not behave in a way that undermines the public perception of independence. Von der Leyen acknowledged that any message of a political nature must "absolutely respect" the rules of code, her spokesman Eric Mamer told reporters. Mamer explained that the video had been shot on Friday at the request of the Croatian Prime Minister's Office, "alongside a whole series of other video messages that the president was in the process of recording. "Mistakes were made," he told reporters in Brussels, though these were technical and due to staff errors, he added. mt-zap-arp/jj
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