After being hand-picked by the 27 EU leaders as the nominee to preside over the European Commission for a second five-year term, Ursula von der Leyen now needs to win the approval of the European parliament. The 65-year-old German politician needs an absolute majority when the 720 MEPs vote on Thursday: 361 votes. For this she can rely on the three pro-European political groups that won a majority of the seats in the European elections last month and supported her in 2019 – her own centre-right European People’s party (188 seats), the Socialists (136), and the liberals of Renew (77).
Yet individual MEPs from all three groups have already gone public to say they won’t back von der Leyen. They include France’s conservative Les Républicains from the EPP, German, Irish and Romanian liberals as well as French and ItalianSocialist delegations, among others. Moreover, as the vote is held by secret ballot, some may support her candidacy in public but still push the “no” button in Strasbourg.
Unsure about her chances of re-election, von der Leyen has been striving to expand her majority in an intense round of negotiations. First, she tried to create a bridge with the hardline right, notably with Giorgia Meloni’s European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) which has 78 seats, but this exposed von der Leyen to criticism from the centre left.
She then moved to the Greens, who have 53 seats, and renewed her commitment to the climate agenda while also reassuring the liberals that she would not make any advances to the far right.
Yet all these groups, including those within her majority, have in the meantime formulated a range of demands that are difficult to reconcile. The Greens want a strong commitment on environmental policies, the EPP want her to revoke the EU’s 2035 ban on internal combustion engine-powered cars, the liberals want to cut red tape and Meloni wants more restrictive migration management.
As a result, von der Leyen has been spreading herself too thinly, promising something to everyone but not fully satisfying anyone. This political ambivalence is deliberate and tactical, but it may have damaged her support in the parliament and compromised her chances of re-election.
By opting for the worst possible strategy, von der Leyen may have created the perfect conditions for being voted down.
First, she may have united the otherwise disunited three far-right groups – Meloni’s ECR, Viktor Orbán’s newly formed Patriots for Europe, and the new Europe of Sovereign Nations, set up by the German far-right AfD – against her.
This reduces the possibility that any of these MEPs will come to her rescue, as some far-right factions did in 2019. Far-right parties complain they have been unfairly ignored in negotiations for the EU’s top jobs, which they say should reflect the EU’s rightward shift. They will probably not miss this opportunity to convey their anger.
Second, while her opening to the Greens could secure her some votes, her refusal to formalise a deal may fail to guarantee their full support, while at the same time alienating her own EPP party.
The uncertainty surrounding von der Leyen’s confirmation could play in her favour. Amid the prospect of Donald Trump’s return to the White House, the war in Ukraine, the rise of the far right in Europe and the EU’s economic decline, many argue that Europe can hardly afford a new wave of drama.
However, voting for this candidate without conviction could constitute the real risk. Ursula von der Leyen is no longer unknown, as was the case in 2019 when she was imposed by EU leaders on the European parliament. She led the commission for five years, pursuing a centre-left agenda on issues such as climate action. But over time her agenda mutated towards a centre-right one, as symbolised by her embrace of Rwanda-style asylum schemes in the new EU migration policy.
Her qualities and failings are known, as she showed during the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. While von der Leyen can claim successes, her presidency has been characterised by continuous crisis management. Besides constantly reacting to events, she has often delegated solutions to national leaders within the European Council – leading to an increasingly evident and damaging rivalry with its president, Charles Michel.
As noted by her predecessor Romano Prodi, her subservience to EU governments has weakened the European project: “Ursula von der Leyen is an accountant of what the heads of state and government tell her.” That’s how many have read her sudden U-turn on the European Green Deal – von der Leyen’s legacy reform – ahead of the EU elections, in an effort not only to placate angry farmers, but also to satisfy the EPP and Liberals’ demand for a “regulatory pause” on European environmental norms.
If her unconditional support for Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the Ukraine war has been praised by experts as a step in the right direction, her equally unconditional support for Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu drew intense criticism, including from the EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell, who defined von der Leyen’s unilateral actions as carrying “a high geopolitical cost for Europe”.
When it comes to applying EU law, her approach has been extremely timid, favouring dialogue over infringement procedures, as epitomised by the lack of regard for resolutions on the rule of law and complacency towards Orbán, the bete noire of parliament.
Given her track record, MEPs should not be afraid to vote down von der Leyen, should they be unpersuaded by her policy programme, which will be unveiled to the public on Thursday morning.
True, a negative vote on von der Leyen would be unprecedented. Yet it would not necessarily create a constitutional crisis. Rather, it would be evidence of the democratic nature of the EU constitutional system, in which the candidate for president must embody a majority capable of steering a clearly defined set of political priorities.
Cobbling together a thin and inconsistent majority incapable of permanently supporting her over the next five years would be a recipe for disaster. The EU needs a clearly defined set of political priorities and a permanent majority capable of advancing them to be able to face its many mounting challenges within and at its borders. Europeans cannot content themselves with someone who EU leaders agreed to endorse for lack of a better candidate.
Alberto Alemanno is the Jean Monnet professor of EU law at HEC Paris and Europe Futures Fellow at IWM in Vienna
