European Parliament: Leyen has to face confidence vote

The EU Commission of Ursula von der Leyen will have to arise in the European Parliament of a vote on a request for no confidence in the European Parliament. According to information from the German Press Agency, parliamentary president Roberta Metsola taught the parliamentary group leader.

Previously, it had been checked whether the right of no confidence initiated by a right Romanian deputy was supported as provided for in the rules by at least one tenth of the 720 MPs. In the two-sided text, the Commission is accused of non-transparency and mismanagement with a view to Corona policy.

Is a failure programmed?

The support of the application by at least 72 MPs means that he has to be debated and coordinated in the coming week during the conference of the parliament. If it is accepted, the EU Commission would have to withdraw.

However, such a scenario is unlikely, since it would need the majority of two thirds of the votes cast and at the same time the majority of the members of the parliament. That would be at least 361 if all MPs are present and hand over their voices, even 480 votes. The Commission of Ursula von der Leyen received 370 out of 688 votes in the election last November.

For the German CDU politician, who belongs to the European party family EVP, the advance from the right warehouse is a stress test despite the low prospects. The reason is that the 66-year-old, with some political initiatives, finally caused displeasure with her actually well-behaved MPs and planned about a billion dollar loan program for defense investments as an emergency measure without parliamentary participation. The latter point is also criticized in the notification of no confidence.

Corona policy allegations

Specifically, the Romanian Gheorghe Piperea and the applicants from the EU Commission’s right-wing camp, for example, also accuse information on text messages exchanged in the Corona crisis between the Leyen and the head of the US Pharma Group Pfizer. In this case, the EU court recently judged that this has been done without sufficient legal justification so far.

In addition, it is criticized, for example, that Corona vaccines worth around four billion euros in vaccine doses remained unused and the Commission is said to have influenced a distorted application of the law on digital services on elections in Member States such as Romania and Germany.

EVP boss Manfred Weber described the application in a first reaction as a party-tactical game that would not find a majority in parliament in the beginning. “Europe chose a year ago and Ursula von der Leyen leads the EU with a strong mandate in turbulent times,” says the CSU politician. In times of economic uncertainty and global upheaval, it is completely irresponsible to do such public stuns. The applicants pursued the goal of unstable and weak Europe.

The last application for no confidence was submitted in 2014

Applications for no confidence against the Commission are extremely rare. Recently, right-wing populists in 2014 had failed with a request for no confidence against the then EU Commission around Jean-Claude Juncker. When voting at the time, only 101 MPs voted for the advance from the EU-critical camp. 461 rejected him, 88 abstained.

The background to the suspension application was at the time revelations about tax advantages for large -scale corporations in Luxembourg. Juncker had been the head of the Grand Duchy for almost 19 years. Critics therefore accused him of “aid to tax evasion”.

To resign an EU Commission, only a threatening successful suspicion in 1999 led. At that time, one of Jacques Santer Commission made her post available as a precaution after a report on fraud, mismanagement and nepotism.