The three Nordic delegations of the European Conservative and Reformist (ECR) group have decided to vote against Ursula von der Leyen’s re-election as EU Commission President scheduled for Thursday. In their joint press conference on Wednesday afternoon, the conservative MEPs cited von der Leyen’s unwillingness to listen to voters and work with the Right, instead of continuing with her leftist coalition’s agenda.
Although ECR spent the past five years criticizing von der Leyen’s policies, the group now appears to be split about supporting her. Meloni is planning to leverage the 24 votes her Fratelli d’Italia carries in exchange for an influential Italian portfolio in the next Commission until the very last minute on Thursday, while the group’s second-largest delegation.The MEPs of the so-called “Nordic Cooperation”—consisting of the Sweden Democrats (SD) with three seats, as well as the Danish Democrats and The Finns party with one seat each—delayed their decision until they sat down with the Commission chief earlier this week, but the meeting turned out to be less than fruitful for the conservatives.
“The 9th of June [brought] a center-right majority in this House. Ursula von der Leyen ruled the Commission with center-left support with center-left policies. This could have changed, but she chose to continue that grand coalition,” MEP Charlie Weimers, the head of the Swedish delegation said at the press conference. He went on:
When she met with us, [von der Leyen] made no promises. And we don’t know what promises she made last night when she had dinner with the co-chairs of the Greens group. We only know that it probably will be very costly for the European taxpayer.
Since [von der Leyen] is not ready to commit herself to center-right policies … there can be no other way for us to do than to vote ‘no.’
As we previously reported, von der Leyen relies on a broad center-left coalition to secure a majority in the plenary for her re-election, made of her centrist European People’s Party (EPP), the social democrat S&D, the liberal Renew, and the Greens.
Even though the Greens suffered the biggest electoral defeat among all groups in the June elections, they are now set to be given more power than they had in the last term— continuing to pursue the disastrous Green Deal—just so that von der Leyen could avoid having to forge a right-wing coalition.
Naturally, national conservatives and sovereigntists in the Patriots for Europe (PfE) and the Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN) are firmly against her—and so too are the far-left group, The Left, due to von der Leyen’s “lack of moral compass when it comes to transparency and integrity.” The Polish Law and Justice (PiS) declared it will vote against von der Leyen weeks ago.
This leaves only Italian PM Giorgia Meloni’s soft-Eurosceptic conservative group undecided.
With Wednesday’s announcement, the Nordic parties have taken their place by PiS’ side in this internal divide. At the same time, they plan to keep the door open for future cooperation with von der Leyen if she is willing to abandon her leftist agenda on key policy issues.
“If she changes her mind and focuses her work on reducing immigration and red tape, increasing growth, securing borders, and building nuclear power, our door is always open for cooperation,” Weimers wrote on X.
At this point support from ECR would be largely cosmetic, as von der Leyen is expected to be carried over the 361-vote threshold even without a single conservative vote. Nonetheless, since anything can happen in a secret ballot, nothing is certain until the results are declared in the early afternoon.
