The Left—the official far-left group in the European Parliament (EP), along with a few independents—has formally called for delaying Thursday’s confirmation vote in the Strasbourg plenary that would secure Ursula von der Leyen’s reelection as EU Commission President. In a press release entitled “Ursula von der Leyen is not fit for office,” they point to a ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) a day earlier, which found several “irregularities” in the vaccine procurement deal with Pfizer. It said that the Commission’s decision to classify most of it lacked transparency.
In their last-minute bid to stop von der Leyen’s all-but-certain reelection in the light of this new ruling—as well as previous conflict of interest scandals plaguing her time at the helm of the EU executive—The Left’s leaders requested EP President Roberta Metsola seek the assessment of the Parliament’s legal services. A decision is sought on whether Thursday’s vote should be postponed until the Pfizer documents have been disclosed by the Commission, as per the ECJ’s ruling.
“The ECJ decision further proves that Ursula von der Leyen lacks a moral compass when it comes to transparency or integrity,” according to the group’s two co-chairs, Manon Aubry of the France Unbowed (LFI) and Martin Schirdewan from Die Linke in their press release.
“Opacity and conflicts of interest are recurrent themes in her political trajectory; she has a history of scandals. Enough is enough. It should be obvious for Mrs. von der Leyen to withdraw her candidacy,” they demanded. “The Court’s decision is proof of her unwillingness to respect transparency and act in the public interest. If any MEP still had any doubts: a vote for Ursula von der Leyen means endorsing backroom deals and lack of integrity.”
The Left was joined in its demands by the non-aligned German MEPs from Sarah Wagenknecht’s left-wing populist BSW party, who sent a similarly harsh letter to Metsola, asking for a postponement of the vote until all relevant documents have been released.
The BSW leaders argued that firstly the problem is that von der Leyen’s decision to withhold information masked potentially massive conflicts of interest around the vaccine procurement deal with Pfizer. Moreover, it also “impaired the work of the European Parliament to the extent that [it] was unable to exercise its monitoring and control rights vis-à-vis the Commission to the extent that’s required.”
Naturally, as in all previous cases when von der Leyen and her Commission escaped legal scrutiny over its transparency issues, these demands are likely to fall flat. Metsola and von der Leyen belong to the same parliamentary group, the centrist European People’s Party (EPP), which has always sought to protect the Commission chief. The Left and its allies—including national conservatives to the right of EPP in this particular case (Patriots, Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN), and most in European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR))—might trigger a vote on the postponement. However, even if they do they’ll likely just be downvoted by the majority with ease.
Von der Leyen’s confirmation vote will take place early afternoon on Thursday, and she expects her reelection by a broad coalition of her EPP, the social democrat S&D, the liberal Renew, the Greens, and parts of the ECR, including Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia, and Czech PM Petr Fiala’s Civic Democratic Party (ODS).
