Von der Leyen must face a vote of no confidence

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• A right-wing Romanian MEP has initiated a motion of censure against Ursula von der Leyen's EU Commission.
• The Commission is accused of lack of transparency and mismanagement with regard to coronavirus policy.
• If the motion is passed, the EU Commission would have to resign as a whole.

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Ursula von der Leyen's EU Commission will have to face a vote of no confidence in the European Parliament next week. According to information from the German Press Agency, Parliament President Roberta Metsola informed the group chairmen of this.

It had previously been checked whether the motion of censure initiated by a right-wing Romanian MEP was supported by at least one tenth of the 720 MEPs, as stipulated in the rules. In the two-page text, the Commission is accused of a lack of transparency and mismanagement with regard to coronavirus policy, among other things.

Support for the motion by at least 72 MEPs means that it will have to be debated and voted on during next week's parliamentary session. If it is adopted, the EU Commission would have to resign as a whole.

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However, such a scenario is considered unlikely, as it would require a two-thirds majority of votes cast and a majority of MEPs. That would be at least 361 votes, or even 480 votes if all MEPs are present and cast their votes. In last November's election, Ursula von der Leyen's Commission received 370 out of 688 votes cast.

For the German CDU politician, who belongs to the European political party family EPP, the push from the right-wing camp is a test of strength despite the low chances of success. The reason for this is that the 66-year-old has recently caused displeasure with some political initiatives, even among MPs who are actually well-disposed towards her, for example planning a multi-billion euro loan program for defence investments as an emergency measure without parliamentary participation. The latter point is also criticized in the motion of censure.

Lack of information on text messages

Specifically, the Romanian Gheorghe Piperea and the applicants from the right-wing camp also accuse the EU Commission, for example, of refusing to provide information on text messages exchanged between von der Leyen and the head of the US pharmaceutical company Pfizer during the coronavirus crisis. In this case, the EU General Court recently ruled that this has so far been done without sufficient legal justification.

In addition, there is criticism that coronavirus vaccines worth around four billion euros in vaccine doses have remained unused and that the Commission allegedly influenced elections in member states such as Romania and Germany through a distorted application of the Digital Services Act.