Ursula von der Leyen is mounting a final push to convince members of the European Parliament to rally behind her bid to become the next president of the European Commission, with the EU facing an institutional crisis if she fails to win a confirmation vote on Tuesday.
The German defence minister spent the weekend pulling together a policy programme intended to answer core demands from MEPs on issues such as fighting climate change, upholding the rule of law and retargeting EU funds, in the hope of securing the endorsement of the assembly’s main pro-European factions. She is facing a potential knife-edge vote if she cannot win round enough centre-left lawmakers.
Under the bloc’s rules, Ms von der Leyen must win the support of an absolute majority of the parliament’s members to become president, meaning she needs backing from 374 MEPs.
EU capitals will be closely following the vote in Strasbourg, aware that rejection would unleash a political crisis at the heart of the union only two weeks after national leaders reached a package deal on filling the commission presidency and other top institutional jobs.
Ms von der Leyen, a political ally of German chancellor Angela Merkel, emerged as a compromise choice during 50 hours of summit talks in Brussels in early July, forming one element of a deal that also included Christine Lagarde’s nomination as president of the European Central Bank.
But the decision has proved controversial with MEPs, notably within the parliament’s social-democrat, leftist and green groups, which have slammed the leaders’ decision to opt for Ms von der Leyen rather than one of the official candidates for the commission presidency who ran in May’s EU elections.
The greens and far-left groups have already formally ruled ot supporting her, both because of the manner of her appointment and what they see as an insufficiently ambitious programme.
The decision has also been bitterly received by Ms Merkel’s social-democrat coalition allies in Berlin, sending discord through the German government that have led some to question how long the alliance can continue.
EU officials note that a refusal by the parliament to back Ms von der Leyen would take the bloc into uncharted waters, especially given that other parts of the jobs package are now difficult to unwind, and the difficulty of finding another candidate who could rally sufficient support from national leaders.
Ms von der Leyen — who only discovered via a phone call halfway through the summit that she was a serious contender for the commission presidency — has since been on an extended charmoffensive with MEPs, including lengthy hearings with the parliament’s different political groups.
EU officials are quietly confident that Ms von der Leyen should be able to secure the numbers once she has delivered her speech on Tuesday morning. She already has the explicit support of her own political group, the centre-right European People’s party, which has the assembly’s single largest cohort of MEPs.
The parliament’s social-democrat and liberal groups have made their support conditional on Ms von der Leyen signing up to an array of commitments in her speech, with each sending her separate letters last week listing their demands.
With their combined backing, the German should in theory easily clear the required threshold, although a significant split in the social-democrat ranks could leave the vote tight.
Spokespeople for the two groups made clear on Friday that one factor that would weigh heavily in the balance would be Ms von der Leyen’s commitment to uphold the rule of law.
Both want firm commitments that she will continue the current commission’s pressure on countries such as Poland and Hungary over their governments’ creeping authoritarianism.
“Very clearly we wouldn’t accept any step back from the work of the last commission on the rule of law,” a spokesman for the Socialists and Democrats group said.
Their concerns have arisen in part because central and eastern European member states, notably Poland and Hungary, played an important role in opening the way for Ms von der Leyen by blocking Frans Timmermans, the socialist candidate for the commission presidency.
Mr Timmermans, the current EU commission’s first vice-president, is responsible for protecting the rule of law in the EU, and has clashed with the Polish and Hungarian governments.
The European Conservatives and Reformists, an anti-federalist group that includes Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party, has underlined that it will oppose Ms von der Leyen unless she takes a different approach to the issue — notably ending what it sees as the unfair targeting of certain countries.
“I think if the attacks continue, the treatment continues the way it has done, the double standards continue, it’s certainly going to push us in a negative direction in terms of supporting her,” an ECR spokesman said.
