BRUSSELS: EU chief Ursula von der Leyen faces a grilling from lawmakers Monday ahead of a confidence vote she is all but certain to survive — but which casts renewed scrutiny on her leadership of the bloc.
The rare challenge pushed by a faction on the far-right has virtually no chance of unseating the conservative European Commission president when it goes to a vote Thursday in Strasbourg.
But Monday’s debate will give von der Leyen’s opponents from across the spectrum a chance to flex their muscles in the bloc’s assembly, one year after EU-wide elections.
The confidence vote was initiated by a Romanian far-right lawmaker, Gheorghe Piperea, who accuses von der Leyen of a lack of transparency over text messages she sent to the head of Pfizer while negotiating Covid vaccines.
The commission’s failure to release the messages — the focus of multiple court cases including by The New York Times — has given weight to critics who accuse its boss of centralized and opaque decision-making.
That is a growing refrain from von der Leyen’s traditional allies on the left and center, who also have bones to pick over the new status quo in parliament — where her center-right camp has increasingly teamed up with the far-right to further its agenda.
“Pfizergate” aside, Romania’s Piperea also accuses the European Commission of interfering in his country’s recent presidential election, which saw the EU critic and nationalist George Simion lose to pro-European Nicusor Dan.
The vote came after Romania’s constitutional court scrapped an initial ballot over allegations of Russian interference and massive social media promotion of the far-right frontrunner, who was barred from standing again.
The EU opened a formal probe into TikTok after the canceled vote.
Piperea’s challenge to von der Leyen has support from part of the far-right — including the Patriots for Europe group that includes both France’s National Rally and the party of Hungary’s nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
The vote was set last week after the motion gathered the minimum 72 signatures — one-tenth of the 720-seat legislature, where von der Leyen was re-elected with 401 votes last July.
Parliament’s biggest force, von der Leyen’s European People’s Party (EPP) flatly rejects the challenge to the commission chief — with group boss Manfred Weber branding it the work of pro-Russian, anti-European forces in the assembly.
Russian President Vladimir “Putin’s puppets in the European Parliament are trying to undermine Europe’s unity and bring the commission down in times of global turmoil and economic crisis,” he charged.
“It’s a disgrace for the European people.”
On the left and center, there is no question of backing the censure motion.
But both camps want to push von der Leyen to clarify her allegiances — accusing her of cosying up to the far-right to push through contested measures, and most notably to roll back environmental rules.
“We are going to ask the EPP, clearly, who it wants to work with,” said the centrist leader Valerie Hayer.
“Is it still with us, the pro-European groups — or with the ECR and Patriots who are trying to bring down the EPP commission chief — and with it a vision of Europe that we believe in?“
The Socialists and Democrats — parliament’s second force — likewise said they had sought “clear signs of commitment” on the EPP’s priorities going forward.
“The EPP should look carefully who they want to build bridges with, us or the ones who initiate votes of censure,” the group said.
A successful vote of no-confidence would trigger the resignation of von der Leyen’s 27-member European Commission in what would be a historical first.
The closest parallel dates from March 1999, when the team led by Luxembourg’s Jacques Santer resigned en masse over damning claims of corruption and mismanagement rather than face a confidence vote it was set to lose.
