The head of the EU’s executive branch faced two more challenges to his post in the European Parliament on Thursday.
No one had a realistic chance of gaining the two-thirds majority needed to oust European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, but she nevertheless served as the latest reminder of the increasingly fragmented European Parliament and its growing populist factions on both political sides.
More than half of MPs supported von der Leyen
Von der Leyen received the support of more than half of the 720-seat European Parliament in both votes Thursday, with 378 members expressing support in the first vote and 383 in the second.
“I deeply appreciate the strong support I received today,” von der Leyen wrote online after the votes. “The Commission will continue to work closely with the European Parliament to tackle Europe’s challenges and together deliver results for all European citizens.”
On the other hand, 179 MPs supported a censure motion brought against von der Leyen by the far-right faction Patriots for Europe (PFE) in parliament, while 133 supported the challenge brought by a coalition called The Left.
Even if the far-right and far-left members of the Chamber had united and pooled their votes, not something they would have achieved very easily, they would still have fallen well short of the two-thirds support required for a censure motion to remove the President of the European Commission.
Thursday’s results were a slight improvement on a similar challenge by von der Leyen in July this year, when 360 members expressed support for her.
More problematically for von der Leyen in practice, the comparatively narrow majority voting in her favor reflects how difficult it is for her European Commission to gain the majority in the European Parliament it needs to pass proposed legislation.
On what basis do populists criticize the Commission Chairman?
Both motions called for the removal of Commission President von der Leyen, referencing the EU’s recent trade deal with Donald Trump’s White House.
The far-right movement criticized his climate, migration and economic policies, including the recent agreement with the US, and accused the former German defense minister of a lack of transparency and censorship.
The Patriots for Europe group includes lawmakers from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party and Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN) party in France. However, it does not include Alternative for Germany (AfD), largely because of the Chinese spying scandal in the office of former AfD member of the European Parliament Maximilian Krahn.
The leftists’ motion accused von der Leyen of not doing enough to address humanitarian suffering in Gaza and also criticized the Commission’s trade deal with the US.
Von der Leyen, who was at an event in Brussels and so did not attend Thursday’s vote in Strasbourg, last week called on parliament to unite, saying division was in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s interests.
Edited by Shawn Sinico