On 10 July, the Parliament rejected a motion of censure tabled by the ECR against the Commission, with 175 votes in favour, 360 against, and 18 abstentions. In July, Ursula von der Leyen received significantly less support from MEPs than before—over a year ago, she was re-elected with 401 votes. Nevertheless, the 41 votes she lost over the course of a year were not enough to topple her.
To successfully pass the motion, opponents of Ursula von der Leyen’s leadership must collect a two-thirds majority of the votes cast, which also represents a majority of the total Members of Parliament. Only three months after the European Parliament had voted on this motion, the house debated not one, but two new motions of censure.
With the stronger presence of right-wing political parties in the European Parliament, MEPs have awakened their power to hold the Commission to account. To table a motion of censure, only 72 signatures are needed (ie, 10 per cent of the members).
As the 2024 election solidified the European right wing, creating the third-largest party in the EP, the Patriots, it became clear that this threshold can easily be met. The Patriots currently have 85 seats in the EP, while the other right-wing party, the ECR, has 78. While these parties can initiate motions of censure, passing them remains out of reach—for now.
The European People’s Party (188 seats), the S&D (136 seats), and Renew (77 seats) all give Commissioners and Vice Presidents (in the case of the EPP, the President) to the European Commission. If Ursula von der Leyen fails, the entire College of Commissioners is expected to resign too. For the EPP, S&D and Renew, a successful motion of censure would carry significant political costs. And for this reason, these parties are not expected to support a motion of censure against the European Commission—and they have not endorsed it on Thursday either.
‘MEPs have awakened their power to hold the Commission to account’
The debate on the motions took place on Monday, followed by the vote on Thursday. The Patriots criticized the Commission’s trade deals: not only the EU–US deal, which introduced high tariffs on European exports, but also the Mercosur agreement, which opens European markets to cheap agricultural products from Latin America. The latter was most powerfully criticized by French Jordan Bardella, who highlighted that the Mercosur deal will ruin European farmers.
The Hungarian Patriot, Kinga Gál, highlighted the European Commission’s focus on Ukraine, instead of on Member States, as a critique of Ursula von der Leyen’s leadership. The competitiveness of the European Union is declining. While EU companies continue to pay high energy prices, the Commission keeps funding Kyiv instead of addressing the challenges faced by Member States. Gál also spoke up against the accelerated Membership of Ukraine, which is against the rights and interests of EU countries. ‘Instead of being the solution, the European Commission has become the problem itself. It is time to go,’ Kinga Gál posted on X shortly after the debate had concluded.
Eventually, on Thursday, PfE’s motion secured 179 votes in favour, 378 against, with 37 abstentions, while the Left’s received 133 votes in favour, 383 against, and 78 abstentions—as Hungarian Conservative reported earlier. That is, the Patriots managed to collect four more votes against Ursula von der Leyen than the ECR in July.
On the other hand, the support for the Commission President was better coordinated this time than during the summer. In July, only 360 voted against the motion. On Thursday, there were two separate votes, with 378 and 383 voting against, respectively.
Looking at the three confidence votes more closely reveals that, in fact, 244 MEPs voted against Ursula von der Leyen on at least one of the motions. That is about one-third of the House already expressing opposition to the Commission. As many Left representatives supported only the Left’s motion, and not the Patriots’ (and vice versa), on any individual vote, no more than 179 votes were collected in favour.
In Hungary, the governing party, Fidesz, as well as the Our Homeland Movement, voted against Ursula von der Leyen. The Democratic Coalition’s two MEPs chose not to participate in the two votes that took place on Thursday. The Tisza Party mostly voted in favour of the Commission. On at least one of the three votes, 5 of the 7 Tisza MEPs voted in favour of Ursula von der Leyen. Only Kinga Kollár and Péter Magyar chose never to express their support for Berlaymont; they did not attend any of the three votes.
Also, note the four ‘rebels’ from the European People’s Party who voted to oust the German leader of the Commission. Four French MEPs, three from Nicolas Sarkozy’s The Republicans, broke the party line to oppose Ursula von der Leyen’s leadership. Importantly, one of them is Vice-Chair of the European People’s Party François-Xavier Bellamy.
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