Why Brussels Can’t Afford To Let von der Leyen Be Burned With Censure Vote

The motion of censure against the European Commission, by a roll-call vote today in the Plenary session in Strasbourg, will fail. Not because it lacks substance, but because the EU Parliament lacks power. 

This is the deeper truth obscured by the headlines.

The EU has yet to realise that, since the 27 national elections held on 9 June 2024, a new centre-right majority could rule the waves here. EPP, Patriots and ECR command together a majority without even needing the ENS. The decades-old centre-left majority no longer exists. 

But the losing Left is cunning, and the victorious EPP is naïve. The Left simply publicly ignores its electoral defeat and carries on as if nothing has changed. And the EPP, in its naïveté, lets them. The whole EPP political family, not Manfred Weber alone, bears the blame. 

For decades, centre-right parties have forgotten how to work together constructively. The Left, by contrast, never relinquishes control of the narrative and continues to cultivate its morally rooted appeal that distracts from the actual election results and the real political shifts occurring across the Member States. 

The post-2024 elections produced a politically fractured landscape in the EU Parliament, with new conservative formations, green-liberal hybrids, and regionalist parties further diluting the good old cohesion. 

In such a context, mobilising around any motion of censure becomes nearly impossible, unless driven by a scandal of seismic proportions. Even then, national political calculation reigns. Mrs von der Leyen has proven deft at playing the centrist field, offering just enough green ideology for the Left, just enough security rhetoric for the Right, and plenty of patronage for her beloved Emmanuel Macron. Her survival is not due to popularity and achievement, but to the institutional incentives of coalition politics in Brussels. 

The motion requires two-thirds of votes cast and an absolute majority of 361 MEPs, a threshold far out of reach given the current parliamentary balance. The European People’s Party remains firmly behind Mrs von der Leyen, seeing her as the stabilising force of a fragile pro-European consensus. Even those in Renew or S&D who privately grumble about her style or policy excesses will not throw their weight behind a motion that risks instability. In Brussels, loyalty to the system trumps policy grievances. It takes two hands to wash one. 

But one cannot keep making concessions to the ousted centre-left majority without simultaneously showing contempt for the election results and, by extension, deepening the public’s disillusionment across the Member States. It is precisely this horse-trading that ordinary people find so repulsive. Every five years, the EU Parliament is then forced to buy back public favour with outrageously expensive and politically questionable election campaigns.

We need to form a “Coalition 551”—a working alliance of the four centre-right groups (EPP, Patriots, ECR, and ESN) that together represent 55.1% of votes in the Conference of Presidents. This coalition would turn centre-right election victories across Europe into real results in the Strasbourg chamber. To succeed, these groups must cooperate consistently and professionally behind the scenes. The so-called “cordon sanitaire” only limits those who choose to believe in it. We should follow the Schuman method: start with practical goals that build trust, and use that foundation to unite the centre-right around a shared conservative agenda.

One accusation against Mrs von der Leyen is that she has concentrated too much power in the European Commission and made it overly political. This criticism is aimed at the wrong person. The model of a “Political Commission” is the toxic legacy of Jean-Claude Juncker, do you remember? He blackmailed the EU in 2014 with the dramatic scenario of a “last-chance Commission.” 

While everyone seemed paralysed by fear, Juncker quietly installed his vision of a politicised executive. It was undoubtedly clever, but over time, it has proven increasingly incompatible with the Commission’s role as the EU’s highest executive and supervisory body. 

Yet when Mr Juncker carried out his democratic coup from the Berlaymont building, the EU Parliament applauded enthusiastically, I remember. Those who summoned the spirits cannot now wish them away.

In a sweeping tirade, Mrs von der Leyen ended up in her defence in Strasbourg on Monday by insulting the very institutions she claims to defend from discredit, a textbook case of cognitive dissonance. As the code “delegitimization of democratic institutions” has now become a rhetorical bludgeon used to dismiss any political competitor’s dissent as inherently dangerous, Mrs von der Leyen herself leads by example, labelling critics as “Putin sympathisers,” “anti-vaxxers,” or “conspiracy theorists.” 

But this is not the case here at all. The motion of censure is not rooted in fringe paranoia, but in serious concerns raised by respected authorities, and they don’t “destabilize the EU:” The New York Times, the European Court of Justice, the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, OLAF, the European Court of Auditors, and the European Ombudsman. The EU Parliament’s own Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) voted on 24 June to sue the Commission over its opaque €150 billion defence loan programme and misuse of Art 122 TEU. It’s a slap in the face of the European Court of Justice and all the other EU institutions, and a double middle finger to the EU Parliament, which is trying to challenge the Commission’s misuse of Article 122. Doing so, JURI is certainly not “destabilizing the EU”.

Still, symbolism matters. The very act of tabling a motion of censure, even a doomed one, punctures the aura of technocratic infallibility that often cloaks the Commission. It reminds citizens, however dimly, that discontent can be formalised. It also exposes the fragility of consensus in the EU, and the growing gap between the electorate and the institutional architecture meant to represent them. 

The EU Parliament finds itself in a paradoxical bind. It has gained formal powers over the years on budgetary issues, legislative scrutiny, international agreements, and even to agree on the composition of the college of Commissioners, but has lost moral authority in the process. Its increasing integration into the Brussels policy-making machine has dulled its edge. Far from being a radical counterweight, it is now often perceived as a rubber-stamping chamber for Commission priorities. 

The likely failure of the motion of censure will not mark the end of discontent. It may, paradoxically, deepen it. For MEPs and citizens alike, the spectacle of a Parliament reduced to symbolic protest will only reinforce cynicism. This episode will underscore the narrative that the EU is a closed system, impervious to democratic correction. 

There is a case, then, for rethinking the institutional balance. Not through grand federalist dreams or slogans about “more Europe,” but through real accountability reforms. The censure process must be made more functional, perhaps by lowering thresholds and replacing the nominal vote with a secret vote. 

The Commission must face mandatory annual hearings with the power to block budgets in cases of non-cooperation. Above all, EU governance must reconnect with the public, not just five years through elections, but through visible, consequential political struggle. Until then, we are left with motions without consequences, gestures without gravity. 

The EU Parliament talks of defending democracy in the world. It should begin by defending it at home, by reclaiming its own role not just as a co-legislator, but as the conscience of the European project.