Document type : article published in Le Monde (subscriber edition)
Authors: Virginie Malingre and Philippe Jacqué
Extract : The outgoing president was elected with 401 votes. While she had the support of the European Greens (with the exception of the French), she had to contend with defections in her own European People's Party grouping, notably from the French LR.
Ursula von der Leyen is not one to express her feelings effusively, but she made no secret of her delight when the European Parliament voted her back in for a new term as President of the Commission on Thursday July 18. "It's much better than last time," she exclaimed, laughing. In 2019, when she stood for office, she was confirmed by just nine votes. This time, 401 MEPs (284 against, 15 abstentions) voted in favor of Angela Merkel's former minister, whose reappointment had been proposed by the European Heads of State and governments on June 27. This tally gave her 41 more votes than the 360 she needed.
In recent weeks, no efforts were spared by the 65-year-old leader to convince every MEP she could to vote for her. Given the outcome of the European elections on June 9, which saw the rise of the far-right, while the numbers of Greens and Renew liberals fell, nothing was certain, a fact of which this German MEP, who has come to embody a green and normative Europe, was fully aware.
Ursula von der Leyen entered into intense negotiations with the political groups that form the majority on which she will rely to push through her legislative projects in Strasbourg: the Christian Democrats of the European People's Party (EPP), the Social Democrats (S&D) and Renew. But defections were to be expected, including from her EPP camp, where the French Republicans (LR), in particular, had announced that they would not vote for her.
In fact, without the 45 or so Greens who supported her candidacy, she would not have been elected. Fratelli d'Italia, the post-fascist party of Italian Council President Giorgia Meloni, whom she had largely accommodated in recent months, did not vote for her. "Meloni is now going to have a hard time asserting her interests in Brussels. She's isolating herself", says a European diplomat. (The rest of the article is reserved for subscribers)
Link to Ursula von der Leyen's 2024-2029 policy guidelines (in English)
