Members of the European Parliament (EP) approved the composition of the second von der Leyen cabinet in a tight vote on Wednesday, November 27th, making way for a ‘fresh’ Commission to be sworn in on December 1st.
However, due to the right-wing shift that took place in Brussels after the June elections as well as von der Leyen’s divisiveness across political lines, the College was approved with record-low support.
After the final morning debate, 380 MEPs voted in favor of the new Commission and 282 against, with 36 abstentions.
With only 54% in favor and 41% against, the current college has the lowest support rate in EU history, ever since Parliament was given the right to approve members of the EU executive in 1993.
It’s also the first time that parliamentary support for the College has fallen below 60%. Even Jean-Claude Juncker’s notoriously distrusted cabinet managed to garner 61% back in 2014, while the first von der Leyen Commission was approved with 65% in 2019.
As one would expect, most of the support for the College came from the mainstream parties’ ‘Ursula coalition,’ comprising her centrist European People’s Party (EPP), the socialist S&D, the liberal Renew, and—ever since the Commission chief’s tight reelection vote in the summer—the Greens.
On the other hand, the majority in all three conservative groups—Patriots for Europe (PfE), European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), and Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN)—voted against the new college, as did the radical leftist The Left.
Looking at the details, however, the story is much more nuanced than that.
For instance, members of the Spanish People’s Party (PP/EPP) voted against the Commission to protest the appointment of socialist Teresa Ribera, who is accused of grossly mishandling the recent floods in Spain’s Valencia region that cost over 220 people their lives. EPP’s Slovenian delegation (SDS) also rejected the Commission over the election of Marta Kos, a former Yugoslav secret police informant.
The French socialists also rebelled against their party’s mainstream and rejected the College over Italy’s Raffaele Fitto being appointed executive vice president (EVP), saying that no conservative should ever be allowed into the top circles of the EU Commission.
Giving Italy the EVP post also cost von der Leyen nearly half of the Green vote, but she made up the difference with the support of MEPs from Italy’s ruling FdI party, who—together with the Flemish N-VA—were the only ones in European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) to vote in favor of the cabinet.
Only the Patriots, the ESN and The Left remained united in their rejection of von der Leyen and her leadership. In addition, the Patriot founder, Hungary’s ruling Fidesz, was the only delegation to vote against the Commission despite having its commissioner candidate (Olivér Várhelyi) sitting in its ranks. Staying true to principles is worth more than ensuring his election, it seems. Kinga Gál, the First VP of the Patriots, said before the vote:
The majority of Europe voted for change, and for good reasons … You represent the lack of change … The Patriots group will not support this Commission. Europe deserves better.
The individual competence of commissioner-designates had little to do with the outcome, which is mostly seen as a coalition agreement between the mainstream parties to back von der Leyen—despite certain political differences and controversial candidates on all sides.
Out of the 27 members of the incoming Commission, 14 belong to the centrist EPP, including Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Despite its major electoral losses in June, the liberal Renew will have five commissioners, ahead of the socialist S&D with four, while the ECR and PfE groups each got one.
The biggest debates during the past weeks’ tense negotiations were about the six Commission vice presidents.
They include the EU’s new foreign affairs chief, Estonian Kaja Kallas (Renew), and five executive vice presidents: Romania’s Roxana Mînzatu (S&D), France’s Stéphane Séjourné (Renew), Finland’s Henna Virkkunen (EPP), Italy’s Raffaele Fitto (ECR), and Spain’s Teresa Ribera (S&D). With competitiveness and climate in her portfolio, the latter has become arguably the second most powerful person in Brussels after von der Leyen.
Although both the EPP and S&D were threatening to walk away from the negotiations over Fitto and Ribera at certain points, they were all approved in the end as part of a coalition deal, regardless of political principles and personal competence.
Protesting the “political pacts and back-room deals” between the mainstream parties, the Patriots submitted a motion for resolution before the vote which called for the outcome of the evaluation meetings to be made public “to ensure the democratic legitimacy” of the process and urged member states to begin discussing how to reform the appointment procedure of the Commission president and its members.
Unsurprisingly, the resolution was rejected with 154 votes in favor and 507 votes against, with conservatives almost exclusively supporting the call for higher standards of transparency.
