EU chief Ursula von der Leyen urged lawmakers to vote down the challenge and renew confidence in her European Commission team (FREDERICK FLORIN) (FREDERICK FLORIN/AFP/AFP)

EU chief Ursula von der Leyen Monday dismissed a far-right sponsored motion of no confidence against her as a conspiracy theory-laden attempt to undermine European unity, ahead of a vote that casts renewed scrutiny on her leadership.

The rare challenge has virtually no chance of unseating the conservative European Commission president when a vote is held Thursday in Strasbourg, France. But it provides her opponents across the spectrum a chance to flex their muscle.

“It is taken right from the oldest playbook of extremists, polarising society, eroding trust in democracy with false claims,” von der Leyen told the European Parliament Monday.

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Attacking its supporters as “anti-vaxxers” and Russian President Vladimir “Putin apologists”, she urged lawmakers to vote down the challenge and renew confidence in her commission at a critical time for the bloc.

“When the commission sits down with the US to negotiate on trade and tariffs, Europe must show strength. When we stand up for Ukraine’s future, Europe must show strength,” she said.

“This strength only comes through our unity. So let us come together.”

The confidence vote was initiated by a Romanian far-right lawmaker, Gheorghe Piperea, who accuses von der Leyen of a lack of transparency over text messages she sent to the head of the Pfizer pharmaceutical giant when negotiating Covid vaccines.

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The commission’s failure to release the messages — the focus of multiple court cases — has given weight to critics who accuse its boss of centralised and opaque decision-making.

That is also a growing refrain from the commission chief’s traditional allies on the left and centre, who have bones to pick over the status quo in parliament — where her centre-right camp has increasingly teamed up with the far-right to further its agenda.

– ‘Putin’s puppets’ –

“Pfizergate” aside, Romania’s Piperea accuses the commission of interfering in his country’s recent presidential election, which saw pro-European Nicusor Dan narrowly beat EU critic and nationalist George Simion.

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The vote came after Romania’s constitutional court scrapped an initial ballot over allegations of Russian interference and massive social media promotion of the far-right frontrunner, who was barred from standing again.

The EU opened a formal probe into TikTok after the cancelled vote.

Piperea’s challenge has support from part of the far-right — including the Patriots for Europe group that includes France’s National Rally and the party of Hungary’s nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban

But Piperea’s own group, the ECR, is split, as its largest faction, the party of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, said it will back von der Leyen.

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The vote was set last week after the motion gathered the minimum 72 signatures — one-tenth of the 720-seat legislature, where von der Leyen was re-elected with 401 votes last July.

To pass it needs two-thirds of votes cast, representing a majority of all lawmakers.

Parliament’s biggest force, von der Leyen’s European People’s Party (EPP), flatly rejects the challenge to the commission chief, with group leader Manfred Weber describing it Monday as a waste of time.

On the left and centre, there is no question of backing the motion.

But both camps want von der Leyen to clarify her allegiances — accusing her of cosying up to the far-right to push through contested measures — most notably to roll back environmental rules.

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“Who do you want to govern with? Do you want to govern with those who want to destroy Europe, or those of us who fight every day to build it?” asked the head of the Socialists and Democrats, Iratxe Garcia Perez.

Centrist leader Valerie Hayer described the commission as “too centralised and sclerotic” before warning von der Leyen that “nothing can be taken for granted.” “Bring order back to your political family,” she said.

A successful no-confidence vote would trigger the resignation of von der Leyen’s 27-member commission in what would be a historical first.

The closest parallel dates from March 1999, when the team led by Luxembourg’s Jacques Santer resigned over damning claims of corruption and mismanagement rather than face a confidence vote it was set to lose.

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The Taoiseach remains “hopeful” that the EU can reach a deal with the US on tariffs.

Micheal Martin said both sides continue to negotiate the “fine detail” of future arrangements.

It comes before a looming Wednesday deadline to make a new deal with the Trump administration, which piling pressure on trading partners by threatening dramatically increased tariffs from the existing 10% rate.

President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen (Carl Court/PA) (PA Wire)

Speaking to the media after a phone call with the European Commission President, Mr Martin said Ursula von der Leyen outlined to him the “most up to date situation”.

Mr Martin said: “We remain hopeful that the US and the European Union can agree an outline agreement or framework principle agreement this week.

“There’s still a number of issues to negotiated, nothing has been rejected, definitively.

“But what it does illustrate, though, that even if a framework agreement is arrived at, there would be a lot of negotiations subsequently.”

“So therefore, whilst it would create some degree of clarity in terms of where we are in the short term, there would still be a number of issues outstanding in respect of that trade issue between the European Union and the United States and indeed between other countries.”

Taoiseach Micheal Martin during a bilateral meeting with US President Donald Trump (Niall Carson/PA) (PA Wire)

Mr Martin said he supported the Commission’s position that an agreement should be reached to provide certainty to consumers, businesses and industry.

Asked if he expected a 10% baseline tariff to remain in place, the Taoiseach said: “There are certain realities that probably will emerge from this that will have impact – and are having impact – on a number of sectors.

“But at least it gives us some sense of the landscape that we have to deal with.”

Russia puppet masters are trying to bring down the European Union, Ursula von der Leyen said on Monday as she came out swinging against a no-confidence vote on her leadership.

The European Commission president said the censure motion was “fuelled by conspiracy theorists, from anti-vaxxers to Putin apologists” in a passionate speech to the European Parliament.

The top Eurocrat was mounting a defence against a no-confidence vote brought by Gheorghe Piperea, a Eurosceptic Romanian MEP, over her secretive negotiations with a pharmaceuticals boss during the coronavirus pandemic.

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“We should be under no illusion about the threats our democracy faces. We have entered into an age of struggle between democracy and illiberalism. We see the alarming threat from extremist parties who want to polarise our societies with disinformation,” Mrs von der Leyen told MEPs.

“There is no proof that they have any answers, but there is ample proof that many are supported by our enemies and by their puppet masters in Russia or elsewhere, and you only have to look at some of the signatories of this motion to understand what I mean.”

Mr Piperea was able to secure the 72 signatures from MEPs necessary to force what will be the first censure motion against a commission president for more than a decade.

His motion is based on widespread complaints that Mrs von der Leyen conducted secret negotiations with Albert Bourla, the boss of the pharmaceutical company Pfizer, to obtain vaccines at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

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She has refused to release the messages, which are now understood to have been deleted, despite widespread condemnation including from the European Court of Justice.

Opening the debate over the confidence motion, Mr Piperea argued that Mrs von der Leyen had presided over the EU like a leader of the Soviet Union.

“The decision-making process has become opaque and discretionary and raises fears of abuse and corruption,” he told MEPs.

He added: “I assure you that not a single citizen from Eastern Europe ever wants to relive those times. We refuse … the Soviet or Russian or Chinese model.”

MEP Gheorghe Piperea told Strasbourg on Monday that Mrs von der Leyen had presided over the EU like a leader of the Soviet Union – Jean-Christophe Verhaegen/AFP via Getty Images

His censure motion is expected to spectacularly fail when MEPs vote on it in a session on Thursday.

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Centrist, pro-Brussels MEPs are expected to row in strong behind the commission chief because the motion was largely backed by politicians considered to be Eurosceptic and far-Right.

The support will come despite harsh criticism of Mrs von der Leyen’s leadership of the EU, which includes the Pfizer gate scandal and her alliances with hard-Right politicians on migration.

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The Commission chief tried to gaslight everyone by alleging that “extremist conspiracy theorists” want to “rewrite history” by asking her to comply with the Court ruling.

Together with Thursday’s no-confidence vote, the parliamentary debate on it on Monday, July 7th, will be remembered in EU Parliament history for a long time. Not because the vote has any chance to succeed and bring down the Commission—not even those who brought it against the President believed it would—but because it laid bare the cracks in the walls of von der Leyen’s crumbling empire. An empire that she will surely try to reinforce with even more authoritarian overreach after today, but, at least for a moment, all of Europe could see that the Queen was naked.

As we explained before, the motion of censure was brought against von der Leyen by 75, mainly national conservative MEPs from the ECR, PfE, and ESN groups, and it’s the first time anyone has succeeded in gathering the required signatures to trigger the process in over a decade.

In their reasoning, the MEPs primarily cited the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling against the Commission chief in the ‘Pfizergate’ scandal. Despite the ruling, she still refuses to disclose her text messages with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla through which she negotiated the biggest portion of the procurement of over ten jabs for every European citizen; otherwise known as “the biggest corruption scandal in human history.”

Apart from Pfizergate, the motion also cites unlawful interference in national elections through biased social media censorship via the DSA; and the “misapplication” of the emergency clause to bypass the Parliament and fast-track the €150 billion joint loan-backed rearmament scheme ‘SAFE,’ over which the EU Parliament unanimously decided to sue the Commission last month.

“Non-democratic concentration of decisions in the hands of the President of the European Commission goes against the principles of checks and balances,” Romanian MEP and former law professor Gheorghe Piperea (ECR), the author of the motion, explained in his opening speech. “The voice of the people is clear. … We were elected to clean up this House. As Churchill said, this is the beginning of the end.”

‘Anti-vaxxers’ and ‘Putin-apologists’: A masterclass in gaslighting

Von der Leyen took the stand with a smug sense of superiority, knowing there was no chance that the conservatives would reach the two-thirds majority needed to bring her down. That is, if the vote will even happen. Parliamentary sources indicated that there’s immense pressure from the presidency toward the signatories to withdraw their support from the motion, and it’s enough for just four MEPs to do so until Thursday for the vote to be called off.

Still, von der Leyen brought the entire College of Commissioners with her to Strasbourg, both for emotional support and to send a political message: vote against me and all 27 commissioners will fall—including those appointed by your governments—and the blame will be on you.

Then she began not by addressing the concerns in the document, but by immediately attempting to delegitimize those who signed it.

“It’s taken out of the oldest playbook of extremists: polarizing society and eroding trust in democracy with false claims of election meddling and attempting to rewrite the history of how successfully Europe overcame the global pandemic together,” von der Leyen said.

There is a choice here: we can follow Mr. Piperea down his world of conspiracies and of alleged sinister plots by what he calls ‘Brussels,’ or we can clearly call this out for what it is: another crude attempt to drive a wedge between our institutions, between the pro-European, pro-democratic forces of this House. And we can never let this happen.

After this masterclass in gaslighting, the Commission chief proceeded to retell the “true story” of the pandemic. From the first images of “military trucks packed with dead bodies driving through Bergamo at night,” to the spectacular political and scientific achievements that led to the “life-saving vaccines” and “digital certificates” that ended the pandemic, according to her.

“This is the Europe of solidarity that I love, and what the extremists hate!” von der Leyen declared. “And this is the true story of the pandemic. We should all be proud of it, and we should never let extremists rewrite history.”

Tension had been building in the room from the beginning, and at this moment, the loud ‘boos’ and shouts of “Liar!” from the right side of the chamber became too overbearing for the Commission chief to continue, and it took the Parliament president a good minute to calm the unruly crowd. But the little interplay still left a lingering effect on von der Leyen, who probably never imagined herself in this position, and all her previous smug confidence seemed to have evaporated in an instant.

Regarding the concrete ‘Pfizergate’ allegations, she only mentioned that “of course” she was in contact with “top” companies, but nothing was agreed in secret, and the implication that the contracts are inappropriate is “simply wrong.” However, she didn’t even try to address the elephant in the room: the ECJ ruling. If von der Leyen is the champion of transparency that she says she is, then why refuse to disclose the text messages even after Europe’s highest court orders you to do so?

Then she concluded with the most important part of her speech: a rallying cry against her perceived enemies of Europe:

We have entered into an age of struggle between democracy and illiberalism … supported by the puppet masters in Russia and elsewhere.

Her solution to save Europe from this “movement fueled by conspiracy, from anti-vaxxers to Putin-apologists” is simple: keep focusing on what European people want the most, which is the defense of “European values,” von der Leyen said. In other words, get ready for ever more power grabs against “extremism” in the name of democracy.

‘Ursula coalition’ no more

The speech was awarded an awkward standing ovation from von der Leyen’s own EPP group, but its MEPs sat down quickly when they realized they were the only ones doing it. Not for nothing, because the moment also brought to the surface the deepest grudges between the parties of the center-left ‘Ursula coalition,’ who were ready to rip each other apart in the ensuing debate.

“Mr. Weber, let me be very clear, this motion is the direct result of the failure of your totally misguided strategy,” said Iratxe García, the chairwoman of the socialist S&D, to the EPP president, accusing him of allying with the “far-right” ECR and sometimes PfE for the past year, even though the so-called ‘center-right’ still votes more than 90% of the time with the Left.

“How can you defend the EU if you ally yourself with those who deny the climate change, attack the Agenda 2030, despise science, silence women, defend Nazism, or ally themselves with Putin and Netanyahu to dismantle international law and destroy Ukraine and Gaza?” García went on without taking a breath.

She then turned to the Commission chief. “And you, Ms. von der Leyen, don’t look away,” García said, almost shouting, accusing the President of partisanship on the greenwashing legislation which she recently withdrew under pressure from the EPP. “If you betray your word once again, know that the Social Democrats will lead the resistance.”

The fierce anti-EPP sentiment was shared by the other leftist groups, such as the liberal Renew and the Greens, who both warned von der Leyen that she must “choose” who to work with: the traitorous EPP that occasionally sells out to the far-right on migration and climate, or the Left that’s the only one still representing democracy.

For their part, the conservative parties seem to have mostly enjoyed the meltdown over on the mainstream side, although their speeches were similarly serious, even if less dramatic.

“Europe deserves better than silence, opaque operations, and bureaucratic authoritarianism,” said the Patriots’ Fabrice Leggeri, a former director of Frontex, who said his group will vote in favor not out of opposition, but as an “act of responsibility.”

“Our Europe is the Europe of freedoms: the Europe that respects identity, sovereignty, and democratic choice; the Europe that protects, builds, and listens, not one that imposes,” Leggeri said. “The people don’t need an all-powerful Commission; what they need is a Europe that they can identify with.”

Only the ECR seemed to have struggled with the question of the censure, with its co-chair Nicola Procaccini beginning by almost apologizing for his colleague, Piperea, for authoring the motion. He quickly explained that two-thirds of ECR consider it a “mistake” that will only push the EPP back into its traditional alliance with the Left for a mere “fifteen minutes of fame.”

It may be true that the EPP will have to tread more carefully from now on if it wants to remain flexible, but at least the debate perfectly illustrated the intolerance of the Left: anything that’s not fully aligned with their political lines is far-right extremism. Not that the EPP has shown itself to be a reliable ally to conservatives either; its few steps toward the Right lately were only motivated by the need to hold onto power amid shifting voter expectations, without any genuine desire to fix the migration or the energy crisis.

Most importantly, the debate exposed how fragile the ‘Ursula coalition’ truly is, signaling that an end may be coming to their self-declared monopoly on defining ‘democracy’.

Their bickering probably would have gone on for hours if this were a real, open debate, but participation was limited to one speaker per political group, which is against the internal rules of the Parliament. AfD lawmaker Christine Anderson even called it out before the debate began, arguing that it’s a mockery of democracy that not even the signatories of the motion are allowed to discuss on the floor, but EP President Roberta Metsola didn’t even reply to the criticism.

Of course, the reason the debate was limited is to spare von der Leyen from as much humiliation as possible. The cherry on top was at the end, when Metsola looked over to ask her if she wanted to come back for one more round to react to the speeches, as customary. But von der Leyen just shook her head in silent defeat, and just like that, the “debate” was over. Now we wait another two years for the ECJ’s ruling on her appeal to get any kind of accountability and closure in Pfizergate.