On Thursday, Ursula von der Leyen received the support of the European Parliament for another mandate at the head of the European Commission, even though the judgment of the EU court the day before called into question the support of a sufficient number of MEPs.
The current head of the EU’s executive body received 401 votes in the first round of secret voting at the plenary session of the new convocation of the parliament in Strasbourg. She needed 360 votes from 719 deputies who activated the mandate. The European Parliament will have 720 representatives in the 10th convocation. On Thursday, 707 representatives voted, and 284 were against the appointment of a German commoner to head the Commission.
On the way to a new mandate of five years, Von der Leyen successfully passed the first step at the end of June when she received the support of the European Council, and she only had to win over half of the representatives.
Given that the centrist groups in the EP have a sufficient number of votes, it was expected that von der Leyen would receive more than half the support and with a certain percentage of those who do not vote in accordance with the majority in their groups. Possible support for the German Christian Democrats was not ruled out by either the Greens, which have 53 representatives, or the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) with 78 representatives. The Greens, according to media reports, ultimately decided to support von der Leyen.
But the EU court’s ruling on Wednesday that its Commission was not transparent enough in the procurement of vaccines during the covid-19 pandemic made her choice more uncertain.
MEPs and citizens, citing freedom of information laws, asked the Commission to publish the vaccine procurement contracts, but the EU’s executive body published only a censored version, prompting a court case.
The EU’s General Court ruled on Wednesday that the Commission did not provide an adequate reason for censoring parts of the agreement by ‘blacking out’ parts of the agreement dealing with compensation for pharmaceutical companies in the event of defective vaccines.
Von der Leyen, however, was obviously helped by the fact that if she is not elected in the EU institutions, a chaotic situation would arise, in addition to the Hungarian presidency, which is already causing disputes.
In the event that it did not receive the support of the Parliament, the European Council would have to appoint a new candidate within a month, the summit of European leaders would have to be held in the middle of summer, and it is not easy to find a new candidate who could receive a qualified majority in the European Council and a majority in parliament.
Reacting to the court’s decision, the Commission pointed out that “the judgments of the General Court are in respect of most requests in accordance with the decisions of the Commission” and that the court confirmed that it had the right to provide partial access.
The lawsuit was accepted in only two points, i.e. that the Commission should have provided additional explanations for refusing access to certain provisions of the contract and that it should have provided the personal data of the members of the negotiating teams, the Commission notes, justifying its action by saying that it was difficult to achieve a balance between the right of the public to information and legal requirements arising from the contracts themselves.
Those who justify the Commission’s action point out that those contracts were concluded in the extraordinary circumstances of the spread of covid-19 when the priority was to secure vaccines for EU citizens as soon as possible.
The commission now has two months and ten days to appeal the decision.
Before the vote, Von der Leyen addressed the members of the European Parliament and largely devoted her speech to the security and competitiveness of the continent.
In her program proposal, she announced the “Investment Commission”. At the first plenary session of the new convocation of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, she emphasized that European competitiveness needs a “big boost”, and that less bureaucracy and “micro-management” are needed to make business easier.
She also announced the continuation of the EU’s green transition towards clean energy sources, such as hydrogen, and environmental protection policies and the fight against climate change.
Another emphasis was placed on the security of the continent, calling for the formation of a European defense union. She said that European countries invest too little in their defense and that their security depends too much on others, referring to the United States.
In her long speech, she touched on a number of topics such as economic inequality, the epidemic of mental illness and artificial intelligence. She also emphasized the necessity of achieving true equality between women and men, starting with income and pensions.
She had to carefully balance her speech and promises and clearly met the expectations of the three centrist clubs and the Greens. The ECR left its representatives to vote according to their “national interests”.
After the vote in the European Parliament, the head of the Commission can start putting together the new collegium of commissioners, which she should present in September. The elected president of the Commission, in agreement with the governments of the member states, decides on the new composition of the Commission and who will receive which department. Last time, in 2019, she asked the member states to propose two candidates each, a man and a woman, in order to have a gender-balanced Commission. However, some member states have already decided to send only one candidate.
German Christian Democrat Ursula von der Leyen is a politician with extensive experience at the head of several German ministries, and she was born into a political family: her father was the famous politician Ernst Albrecht. He has been at the head of the Commission since 2019.
She was born in Brussels, where her father, the later Prime Minister of the federal province of Lower Saxony Ernst Albrecht, held high positions in the European Economic Community and the European Community, the forerunners of the European Union. Von der Leyen spent the first 13 years of her life in Brussels, Hina writes.
