Despite her coalition having a majority in the European Parliament, Ursula von der Leyen does not have enough votes to be confirmed for a second term without outside help.
Even though right-wing parties were the biggest winners of the EU election and Meloni’s conservative European Conservative and Reformists (ECR) is now the third largest group in the Parliament, the Commission chief’s leftist coalition partners leave her no choice but to turn toward the Greens—cementing Brussels’ leftist hegemony once again.
Politico reports that on Tuesday, July 2nd, von der Leyen met with the leaders of all the political families in the Parliament behind closed doors to present her broad policy priorities and to gauge how much political support she could get. Perhaps not satisfied, the Commission president left the meeting room and stormed off towards the elevator to escape journalists who wanted to know how the talks went, sparing only a single word: “Good.”
According to the former liberal leader Jacob Moroza-Rasmussen, the ‘Ursula coalition’—the centrist European People’s Party (EPP), the social democrat S&D, and the liberal Renew—whipped up 350 MEPs who committed to support von der Leyen’s second term. That’s out of the 399 seats the three parties claim between them, which translates to a roughly 12% defection rate, consistent with historical experience.
If the number is correct, that leaves von der Leyen eleven votes short of reaching the 361-seat threshold that marks the absolute majority in the 720-seat chamber. Possibly even more, as the secret ballot gives parties plausible deniability in case they decide not to honor their pledge.
One option, therefore, is to secure additional votes from Giorgia Meloni’s ECR—in exchange for, perhaps, a Commission vice presidency and other influential posts given to Italy, as Meloni’s 24 seats alone would be enough to help von der Leyen sleep easier.
However, it seems that it is the losers who get to dictate terms in Brussels. Some of the leftist coalition partners from S&D and Renew threatened to abandon von der Leyen if she made a deal with Meloni, whom they still perceive as ‘far right’ despite having the strongest democratic mandate among the major European leaders.
Instead, they want von der Leyen to rely on the Greens, the group that lost the largest share of seats at the election. “If you just do the counting, if S&D and Renew are saying don’t do it with ECR, then there’s only one possibility to get to a stable majority, and that’s with the Greens. That’s no rocket science,” the group’s co-president, Bas Eickhout said after the meeting with von der Leyen.
“She is playing a dangerous game the moment she starts to shop a bit around in ECR because you might win 25 from, for example, the Italian delegation and you lose 20 from the S&D delegation, potentially,” he added, urging von der Leyen to consider a “broader majority” by including the Greens in her coalition.
Naturally, the Greens are also prepared to make the most of their kingmaker status. They may ask for guarantees not to give any more concessions to the protesting farmers and to continue with harsher climate goals, for example.
They would definitely have the support of the socialists to do so, as von der Leyen’s “clear commitment” to the Green agenda was one of the S&D’s priority demands for the Commission chief during Tuesday’s meeting, along with more social and gender equality policies.
In other words, the right-wing shift in Europe appears to have resulted in an even more leftist coalition in the European Parliament. It seems, after all, that no matter how much European people want change, Brussels’ leftist establishment finds a way to go around voters and continue their business as usual, all while claiming to be the defenders of democracy.
