Despite tensions and criticism, the motion of censure to Ursula von der Leyen was widely rejected on Thursday, July 10 in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, but the president of the commission did not escape the criticisms of his left and central allies about his method. Started by the extreme right, the attempt of censorship was supported by 175 deputies, far from the minimum required of 361 votes, and repelled by 360 elected officials.
Coming from the right, Ursula von der Leyen preserves the support of the social democrats, the centrists and part of the greens, despite the internal tensions.
“Thank you,” he reacted on social networks. “At a time when the world situation is unstable and unpredictable, the European Union needs strength.”
A year after European elections, the episode made it possible to take stock of political balances in Strasbourg. Distributed in three groups, the extreme right has not unanimously censored the chief of the Executive. The Italians of the Giorgia Meloni party, more conciliatory with Ursula von der Leyen, did not participate in the ballot.
“European project stability”
Within the radical left, a dozen Eurodiputados supported the motion, but most of the group was absent to avoid being associated with an initiative very well. First force in the hemicycle, the right (PPE) has blocked around the president of the commission.
“We are the stability factor of the European project. We have given the European Commission the strength it needs,” said the president of the conservative group Manfred Weber.
The hemicycle did not replenish, a sign of the little suspense around this initiative dedicated to failure, but also, perhaps, tensions in the so -called “Proeuropean” camp. This attempt of censorship had given rise to a restless debate in the hemicycle on Monday.
Ursula von der Leyen had suffered criticism from the left and the center, which criticizes him for too vertical management and accuses the PPE of cultivating ambiguity with the extreme right of better questioning environmental laws.
“Our support to Ursula von der Leyen is not acquired,” repeated the president of the centrist, Valérie Hayer, on Thursday. “We are asking for the resumption of your political family to stop alliances with the extreme right.”
“No to the extreme right”
When voting against censorship, social democrats also meant “not to the extreme right and its destructive initiatives,” their head of Iratxe García Pérez reacted. But “we demand a real commitment of the PPE in favor of a social, fair and green Europe,” he asked.
It is a Eurodiputa from afar Romanian, Gheorghe Pipper (ECR), which initiated the motion of censure to punish in particular the lack of transparency of the head of the “Pfizergate” commission. The German leader never made public an exchange of SMS with the CEO of the CEO Albert Bourla during the Pandemia of Cavid, when the European Union negotiated the purchase of vaccines from this American laboratory.
The case has won the Complaints Commission of several associations and personalities opposed to vaccines, as well as the New York Times that sought in vain to access the messages in question. Gheorghe Pipper had criticized the commission “to ignore Parliament”, due to a “non -democratic concentration of decisions in the hands” by Ursula von der Leyen.
Absent during the debate on Monday, the president of the Patriots group, the Frenchman Jordan Bardella, was present during the vote and pointed to his right troops to support censorship, to challenge the “abuse of power”, the “punitive ecology” and the “ruin of farmers.”
Combative during the debate, Ursula von der Leyen had set up in the niche against the initiators of the motion of censure, “extremists”, “anti -vaccinas” and admirers “of Putin,” he launched.
Source: BFM TV
