The EU’s top official easily
survived two no-confidence votes as lawmakers overwhelmingly rejected motions
to censure her leadership on Thursday.
A far-right censure move against European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was rejected by 378 parliamentarians, with 179 voting in favor and 37 abstaining. 383 MPs voted against a far-left resolution, while 133 lawmakers supported it and 78 abstained.
Since starting her second five-year tenure as head of the EU's influential executive body, von der Leyen has already withstood three no-confidence votes in a single year. In almost ten years, she is the first commission chief to be subject to such elections.
The commission drafts EU
legislation and oversees the observance of those regulations once they become
operative. In addition, it is Europe's leading competition authority and
oversees trade for the 27 member nations.
Under von der Leyen's leadership, the nationalist Patriots for Europe political group maintains that migration "has exploded" and poses a threat to "our identity and security." Its members claim that she abandoned farmers and consumers, putting pro-environmental policies and food safety at risk.
The Left accuses her of neglecting to take action against the Israeli government's systematic violations of international law in Gaza and of "approving a number of harmful trade agreements."
However, at the Strasbourg, France, votes, von der Leyen had the support of the major pro-European centrist parties. They claim that fringe organizations from both the left and the right are using the censure motions as a political point-scoring tool, and they have a majority in the assembly.
However, von der Leyen, who spearheaded the EU's efforts to discover vaccines for all 27 nations during the pandemic, and her center-right European People's Party, the largest political family in the assembly, have also come under fire for the votes.
They are charged with advancing their political goal by cosying up to the hard right.
What were the main reasons MEPs gave for rejecting the motions?
The primary rationale given by
Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) for dismissing the motions of censure
against Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, was the
requirement of a high voting threshold rate for a motion of censure to
pass.
To remove the Commission, a two-thirds majority of the votes cast is needed, and that is considered statistically improbable.
More specifically, MEPs indicated that motions of censure in Parliament are typically more symbolic than legally effective and are political maneuvers to express their displeasure with the President or Commissioner and not to take out a sitting President or Commissioner.