EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen
Daina Le Lardic © European Union 2025 – Source : EP
Together with Thursday’s no-confidence vote, the parliamentary debate on it on Monday, July 7th, will be remembered in EU Parliament history for a long time. Not because the vote has any chance to succeed and bring down the Commission—not even those who brought it against the President believed it would—but because it laid bare the cracks in the walls of von der Leyen’s crumbling empire. An empire that she will surely try to reinforce with even more authoritarian overreach after today, but, at least for a moment, all of Europe could see that the Queen was naked.
As we explained before, the motion of censure was brought against von der Leyen by 75, mainly national conservative MEPs from the ECR, PfE, and ESN groups, and it’s the first time anyone has succeeded in gathering the required signatures to trigger the process in over a decade.
In their reasoning, the MEPs primarily cited the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling against the Commission chief in the ‘Pfizergate’ scandal. Despite the ruling, she still refuses to disclose her text messages with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla through which she negotiated the biggest portion of the procurement of over ten jabs for every European citizen; otherwise known as “the biggest corruption scandal in human history.”
Apart from Pfizergate, the motion also cites unlawful interference in national elections through biased social media censorship via the DSA; and the “misapplication” of the emergency clause to bypass the Parliament and fast-track the €150 billion joint loan-backed rearmament scheme ‘SAFE,’ over which the EU Parliament unanimously decided to sue the Commission last month.
“Non-democratic concentration of decisions in the hands of the President of the European Commission goes against the principles of checks and balances,” Romanian MEP and former law professor Gheorghe Piperea (ECR), the author of the motion, explained in his opening speech. “The voice of the people is clear. … We were elected to clean up this House. As Churchill said, this is the beginning of the end.”
Von der Leyen took the stand with a smug sense of superiority, knowing there was no chance that the conservatives would reach the two-thirds majority needed to bring her down. That is, if the vote will even happen. Parliamentary sources indicated that there’s immense pressure from the presidency toward the signatories to withdraw their support from the motion, and it’s enough for just four MEPs to do so until Thursday for the vote to be called off.
Still, von der Leyen brought the entire College of Commissioners with her to Strasbourg, both for emotional support and to send a political message: vote against me and all 27 commissioners will fall—including those appointed by your governments—and the blame will be on you.
Then she began not by addressing the concerns in the document, but by immediately attempting to delegitimize those who signed it.
“It’s taken out of the oldest playbook of extremists: polarizing society and eroding trust in democracy with false claims of election meddling and attempting to rewrite the history of how successfully Europe overcame the global pandemic together,” von der Leyen said.
There is a choice here: we can follow Mr. Piperea down his world of conspiracies and of alleged sinister plots by what he calls ‘Brussels,’ or we can clearly call this out for what it is: another crude attempt to drive a wedge between our institutions, between the pro-European, pro-democratic forces of this House. And we can never let this happen.
After this masterclass in gaslighting, the Commission chief proceeded to retell the “true story” of the pandemic. From the first images of “military trucks packed with dead bodies driving through Bergamo at night,” to the spectacular political and scientific achievements that led to the “life-saving vaccines” and “digital certificates” that ended the pandemic, according to her.
“This is the Europe of solidarity that I love, and what the extremists hate!” von der Leyen declared. “And this is the true story of the pandemic. We should all be proud of it, and we should never let extremists rewrite history.”
Tension had been building in the room from the beginning, and at this moment, the loud ‘boos’ and shouts of “Liar!” from the right side of the chamber became too overbearing for the Commission chief to continue, and it took the Parliament president a good minute to calm the unruly crowd. But the little interplay still left a lingering effect on von der Leyen, who probably never imagined herself in this position, and all her previous smug confidence seemed to have evaporated in an instant.
Regarding the concrete ‘Pfizergate’ allegations, she only mentioned that “of course” she was in contact with “top” companies, but nothing was agreed in secret, and the implication that the contracts are inappropriate is “simply wrong.” However, she didn’t even try to address the elephant in the room: the ECJ ruling. If von der Leyen is the champion of transparency that she says she is, then why refuse to disclose the text messages even after Europe’s highest court orders you to do so?
Then she concluded with the most important part of her speech: a rallying cry against her perceived enemies of Europe:
We have entered into an age of struggle between democracy and illiberalism … supported by the puppet masters in Russia and elsewhere.
Her solution to save Europe from this “movement fueled by conspiracy, from anti-vaxxers to Putin-apologists” is simple: keep focusing on what European people want the most, which is the defense of “European values,” von der Leyen said. In other words, get ready for ever more power grabs against “extremism” in the name of democracy.
The speech was awarded an awkward standing ovation from von der Leyen’s own EPP group, but its MEPs sat down quickly when they realized they were the only ones doing it. Not for nothing, because the moment also brought to the surface the deepest grudges between the parties of the center-left ‘Ursula coalition,’ who were ready to rip each other apart in the ensuing debate.
“Mr. Weber, let me be very clear, this motion is the direct result of the failure of your totally misguided strategy,” said Iratxe García, the chairwoman of the socialist S&D, to the EPP president, accusing him of allying with the “far-right” ECR and sometimes PfE for the past year, even though the so-called ‘center-right’ still votes more than 90% of the time with the Left.
“How can you defend the EU if you ally yourself with those who deny the climate change, attack the Agenda 2030, despise science, silence women, defend Nazism, or ally themselves with Putin and Netanyahu to dismantle international law and destroy Ukraine and Gaza?” García went on without taking a breath.
She then turned to the Commission chief. “And you, Ms. von der Leyen, don’t look away,” García said, almost shouting, accusing the President of partisanship on the greenwashing legislation which she recently withdrew under pressure from the EPP. “If you betray your word once again, know that the Social Democrats will lead the resistance.”
The fierce anti-EPP sentiment was shared by the other leftist groups, such as the liberal Renew and the Greens, who both warned von der Leyen that she must “choose” who to work with: the traitorous EPP that occasionally sells out to the far-right on migration and climate, or the Left that’s the only one still representing democracy.
For their part, the conservative parties seem to have mostly enjoyed the meltdown over on the mainstream side, although their speeches were similarly serious, even if less dramatic.
“Europe deserves better than silence, opaque operations, and bureaucratic authoritarianism,” said the Patriots’ Fabrice Leggeri, a former director of Frontex, who said his group will vote in favor not out of opposition, but as an “act of responsibility.”
“Our Europe is the Europe of freedoms: the Europe that respects identity, sovereignty, and democratic choice; the Europe that protects, builds, and listens, not one that imposes,” Leggeri said. “The people don’t need an all-powerful Commission; what they need is a Europe that they can identify with.”
Only the ECR seemed to have struggled with the question of the censure, with its co-chair Nicola Procaccini beginning by almost apologizing for his colleague, Piperea, for authoring the motion. He quickly explained that two-thirds of ECR consider it a “mistake” that will only push the EPP back into its traditional alliance with the Left for a mere “fifteen minutes of fame.”
It may be true that the EPP will have to tread more carefully from now on if it wants to remain flexible, but at least the debate perfectly illustrated the intolerance of the Left: anything that’s not fully aligned with their political lines is far-right extremism. Not that the EPP has shown itself to be a reliable ally to conservatives either; its few steps toward the Right lately were only motivated by the need to hold onto power amid shifting voter expectations, without any genuine desire to fix the migration or the energy crisis.
Most importantly, the debate exposed how fragile the ‘Ursula coalition’ truly is, signaling that an end may be coming to their self-declared monopoly on defining ‘democracy’.
Their bickering probably would have gone on for hours if this were a real, open debate, but participation was limited to one speaker per political group, which is against the internal rules of the Parliament. AfD lawmaker Christine Anderson even called it out before the debate began, arguing that it’s a mockery of democracy that not even the signatories of the motion are allowed to discuss on the floor, but EP President Roberta Metsola didn’t even reply to the criticism.
Of course, the reason the debate was limited is to spare von der Leyen from as much humiliation as possible. The cherry on top was at the end, when Metsola looked over to ask her if she wanted to come back for one more round to react to the speeches, as customary. But von der Leyen just shook her head in silent defeat, and just like that, the “debate” was over. Now we wait another two years for the ECJ’s ruling on her appeal to get any kind of accountability and closure in Pfizergate.
