First woman nominated to lead EU Commission

EU leaders have picked German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen for the top post of European Commission chief, after a marathon three-day summit.

The nomination of Von der Leyen, a close ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel, came as a surprise after the main front-runners were rejected, BBC reports.

If approved by the European Parliament she will become the first female Commission president.

IMF head Christine Lagarde has been nominated for the head of the ECB.

The European Central Bank role is currently filled by Mario Draghi, who was widely credited with saving the euro during the eurozone debt crisis.

In all, EU leaders were tasked with nominating five people for the top jobs.

Belgian liberal Prime Minister Charles Michel is nominated to replace Mr Tusk while Spain's Josep Borell is proposed as foreign policy chief.

Who is Von der Leyen?

Born in Brussels, her family moved to Germany when she was 13. She studied economics and London's LSE and medicine in Hanover before going into politics.

A close ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, she has been a member of Mr Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) since 2005.

Now 60, Von der Leyen is the mother of seven children, highly unusual in a country where the average birthrate is 1.59 children per woman.

She is seen as a staunch integrationist, backing closer military co-operation in the EU and highlighting earlier this year the "potential Europe has to unify and to promote peace".

Her appointment as German defence minister in 2013 was unexpected and followed three months of coalition talks between the CDU and the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD).

From that moment, she quickly grew in popularity among the German public. As defence minister in the EU's most industrialised and populous country, she has argued for Germany to boost its military involvement in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato).

However, her tenure in the defence post has not been without its failures.

In recent years, a litany of stories have exposed inadequacies in Germany's armed forces, from inoperable submarines and aircraft to shortages of personnel.

A report published last year highlighted the shortfalls, saying they were "dramatically" hindering Germany's readiness for combat. It said that no submarines or large transport planes were available for deployment at the end of 2017.

Last week, two German air force jets were involved in a mid-air collision during a military exercise over north-eastern Germany.

While her appointment was initially seen as a fresh start for a Germany ministry beset by problems, Ms Von der Leyen was last year questioned as part of an investigation into spending irregularities.

Her defence department was accused of awarding questionable private contracts to consultants that were said to be worth millions of euros.

She later admitted that a number of errors were made in allocating contracts and that new measures were being implemented to prevent it happening again.