Ursula von der Leyen on Thursday survived a vote of confidence in her leadership, but the event wasn’t a complete victory for the European Commission president.
If the European Parliament motion had passed, von der Leyen and her team of commissioners would have been forced to stand down — an unlikely scenario that would have plunged the EU into chaos. The motion of censure instead got the support of 175 lawmakers, well short of the two-thirds majority needed for it to pass.
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Support for von der Leyen — in the form of votes rejecting the censure motion — came, as expected, mostly from centrist political groups, including her own European People’s Party, the Socialists and Democrats, the liberal Renew, and the Greens.
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But on closer inspection, the support for von der Leyen was lackluster.
Just 553 of the Parliament’s 719 MEPs showed up to vote. At least part of that absenteeism appears to have been deliberate, as 636 lawmakers cast a ballot in the next vote on the Parliament’s schedule, which took place just minutes later.
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Overall, twice as many lawmakers rejected the motion against von der Leyen as supported it. Still, with 166 missing votes, the show of support for von der Leyen was lukewarm.
Barely 30 percent of Italy’s MEPs voted in support of von der Leyen; half skipped the vote. And just 32 percent of France’s EU lawmakers voted against the motion — with one-quarter of all French MEPs not showing up to vote.
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In four EU countries — Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and also France — the number of MEPs supporting the motion to force von der Leyen out was higher than the number of those who voted against it.
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