European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen strongly defended herself on Monday against a no-confidence motion initiated by far-right members of the European Parliament. Speaking during a heated session in Strasbourg, France, von der Leyen accused her opponents of promoting conspiracy theories related to her leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The motion, spearheaded by right-wing lawmakers, accuses von der Leyen of various alleged misdeeds, including private communications with Pfizer’s CEO during the vaccine rollout, misuse of EU funds, and interference in elections in Germany and Romania. She led the EU’s vaccine procurement effort for nearly 450 million citizens at the height of the pandemic.
“We can never let extremists rewrite history,” von der Leyen said, emphasizing that the censure effort was a calculated move to divide pro-European factions within the Parliament.
The vote on the censure motion is scheduled for Thursday and would require a two-thirds majority to pass—a highly unlikely outcome, though defeat would force von der Leyen to resign. Despite the political turbulence, she is expected to survive the vote with strong support from centrist and pro-European parties.
Romanian lawmaker Gheorghe Piperea, who represents the nationalist Alliance for the Union of Romanians party, has been one of the loudest voices behind the motion. He accused von der Leyen of bypassing parliamentary processes and operating with opacity. “The decision-making process has become opaque and discretionary and raises fears of abuse and corruption,” Piperea said.
Von der Leyen dismissed those remarks as extremist rhetoric, saying they were designed to undermine democratic trust and distort the EU’s response to the pandemic. “This speech was taken from the oldest playbook of extremists,” she said, accusing her critics of spreading disinformation and undermining unity.
While von der Leyen’s political future appears secure for now, the motion underscores growing dissatisfaction with her leadership among certain factions. She belongs to the center-right European People’s Party (EPP), the largest political group in the EU Parliament.
However, the EPP has faced criticism from other centrist blocs for cooperating with hard-right parties on key parliamentary decisions. The Socialists and Democrats (S&D), the second-largest group in Parliament, blamed the EPP for emboldening extremists.
“This censure motion is the result of the EPP’s irresponsibility and their double games,” said S&D leader Iratxe García Pérez. While her group opposes the motion, she questioned the EPP’s alliances: “Do you want to govern with those that want to destroy Europe, or those of us who fight every day to build it?”
The EPP previously joined forces with the far right to shape the agenda for vetting von der Leyen’s new commissioners and blocked the creation of an EU ethics body in the wake of a 2022 corruption scandal linked to Qatar.
Speaking to the EPP, Dutch Green lawmaker Bas Eickhout warned: “You are feeding that beast, and at a certain moment, the beast will eat you.”
The last time a censure motion led to a major shake-up was in 1999, when then-Commission President Jacques Santer and his team resigned amid accusations of fraud, mismanagement, and nepotism.
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