Brussels (Brussels Morning Newspaper) – European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen smoothly survived a no-confidence vote in the European Parliament on Thursday. The vote was initiated mainly by far-right lawmakers accusing her and her team of eroding trust in the EU through illegal actions. The motion for censure was overwhelmingly rejected by the majority of EU lawmakers.
The European Parliament’s first censure motion in more than ten years was introduced against the European Commission president by a group of far-right lawmakers.
The motion included various allegations against von der Leyen, such as privately messaging Pfizer’s CEO during the COVID-19 pandemic, misusing EU funds, and meddling in elections in Germany and Romania.
The motion was rejected with a vote of 360-175, while 18 lawmakers abstained during a plenary session at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France. Von der Leyen was not present for the vote.
How did Von der Leyen defend her pandemic role?
In the parliamentary debate regarding her leadership, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen defended her handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and pushed back against the criticism and defended her claim that her handling ensured equal access to vaccines across the European Union.
She pointed out the effort made by the EU to secure vaccine supply for all EU countries and pointed out the solidarity principle that was the foundation of how the vaccine would be supplied across Europe.
Why did far-right MEPs call for her removal?
Romanian nationalist MEP Gheorghe Piperea, the primary sponsor of the no-confidence motion against European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, has fiercely chastised the Commission for not releasing text messages between von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla during the COVID-19 vaccine negotiations.
What are the allegations behind the censure motion?
Piperea claims that the Commission violated transparency guidelines and disregarded an EU General Court decision ordering the release of these communications. He called the Commission’s actions an “abuse of power” and demanded that the messages be fully revealed, saying that secrecy undermines accountability regarding the vaccine deals worth multiple billion euros executed on behalf of EU citizens.
The controversy, which has now come to be known as “Pfizergate”, is based on the Commission’s refusal to allow access to text messages it received from early 2021 to mid-2022. Von der Leyen has argued she could not provide access to the messages because she did not possess them.
Did the commission violate EU court transparency rules?
However, the EU General Court ruled that the messages are official EU documents and that the Commission failed to sufficiently demonstrate why access to the documents was not possible. This was an important loss for von der Leyen, who has been under the spotlight for the ongoing circumstance of EU vaccination procurement and the perceived lack of transparency throughout the process.
