As expected, the motion of censure against the European Commission, headed by its president Ursula von der Leyen, has failed in the European Parliament this morning. The initiative has only achieved 175 votes, of the 553 Europarliamentarians present, plus 18 abstentions and 360 votes against.
The proposal was a trap, presented by a deputy of Romania’s ultra -right that sought a double purpose: to reinforce his own party, antieuropeo, who licks wounds for having lost the elections in his country in May, and damaging European institutions, who reject with the label of “Brussels bureaucrats.” To do this, I used a case that, in reality, is still unsolved: the scandal for the lack of transparency of the president of the Commission before, during the pandemic and negotiation with this pharmaceutical for the community purchase of vaccines against the Coronavirus.
The case dates back to 2023, when the North American newspaper The New York Times Brussels’s refusal denounced before European justice to reveal the content of those messages. The existence of them was revealed by Bourla himself in an interview to this medium in 2021, but community services, which initially did not admit that they exist, they indicated after their content was not relevant and were erased, so it was not possible to share them.
Although the majority in favor of the EC has been overwhelming, the mere fact that a motion has had to be discussed (last Monday, at the headquarters of the Eurocamara in Strasbourg) and has had to vote today is a wear for the German and her team, when rescuing an opaque matter, on which the General Court of the European Union has claimed more transparency. Hence, ending a government is a stretch.
The Eurodiputa Gheorghe Pipper, of the Alliance Party for the Union of the Romanians (Aur), had the beginning with the support of almost 80 deputies of the spectrum of the extreme right, but in the process from the approval of his text to the final vote he has failed to add new supports, when he needed up to two thirds of the hemicycle to take out the motion.
Everything has followed the planned script: the classic center and left groups have renewed their support for von der Leay their team of commissioners, as they did less than a year ago, after the European elections. Although today one in four parliamentarians is ultra of rights, the stabilizing power of this alliance keeps institutions standing and guarantees its operation, at least for now, although there are internal criticisms, that there are, to issues such as the one that was specifically discussed in this case.
In the bosom of the radicals there have been, on the other hand, disunity: among the 175 support of the motion there were votes of the conservatives and reformists (ERC), but also of patriots in Europe (in which the Spanish Vox is), the group of extreme right Europe of the sovereign nations and a handful of members of the Eurocamara non -affiliated. Also, testimonial, some of the European Popular Party (PPE), to which Von der Leyen belongs.
