European Commission to Face No-Confidence Vote in EU Parliament

A group of MEPs have filed a motion of censure on the commission, with a vote slated for July 10.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels, Belgium, on April 9, 2025. Omar Havana/AP Photo

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen faces a no-confidence vote in the European Parliament this week, partly because of text messages she exchanged with the head of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) will debate the president’s future at the parliament in Strasbourg, France, over the next few days before voting on a censure motion on July 10.

The motion, brought forward by a group of mostly conservative MEPs led by Romanian MEP Gheorghe Piperea, would require a two-thirds majority of the votes cast, as well as the support of more than half of all MEPs (at least 361 out of 720), in order to pass.

Other allegations contained in the motion include the misuse of European Union funds and interfering in elections in Germany and Romania.

The motion “calls on the Commission to resign due to repeated failures to ensure transparency and to its persistent disregard for democratic oversight and the rule of law within the Union.”

If successful, the motion would force the resignation of von der Leyen and the other 26 commissioners who make up the College of Commissioners.

“Life of the europeans is worst than in 2019 because of Ursula’s iron fist in a velvet glove,” Piperea wrote on social media platform X on July 6. “As a MEP, I received thousands of mails urging me to vote for a better life for dogs and cats. Still, not a single one for a better life of people, by voting the motion against Ursula.”

On July 4, Daniel Koster, a spokesperson for the European People’s Party (EPP)—the largest political group in the parliament, of which von der Leyen is a member—said: “This is a list of backbenchers, [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s friends. They’re anti-Ukrainian and anti-EU.”

Koster noted that the center-right EPP “will unanimously vote against this.”

The second-biggest political group, the Socialists and Democrats group, said the censure motion is a result “of the EPP’s irresponsibility and the double games.”

No-confidence votes in the commission, the organization’s executive branch, have happened about nine times in the bloc’s history.

A threatened censure motion in early 1999 prompted the commission, then led by Jacques Santer, to resign collectively on March 15, 1999, before the European Parliament could formally vote.

Von der Leyen, Germany’s defense minister from 2013 to 2019, has served as European Commission president since 2019.

The Epoch Times reached out to a spokesperson for von der Leyen for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.