BRUSSELS — The European lawmaker who led a failed no-confidence vote against Ursula von der Leyen is suing her for defamation because he says she implied he was taking orders from Russia.

Romanian MEP Gheorghe Piperea, of the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), said the European Commission president chose to “personally attack” him in her remarks during the no-confidence debate.

Piperea is seeking an official public apology for the Commission president’s comments, which he said included that its signatories were “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s friends,” “extremists,” and propagators of “conspiracy theories.” A “significant number” of those signatories have joined the lawsuit, the MEP said.

The lawsuit was filed at the EU Court of Justice, which has yet to rule on whether the case is admissible. While defamation cases are usually handled by national courts — as the CJEU only rules on EU law — Piperea is using an article of the treaty founding the EU as legal basis. The article states the EU needs to “make good any damage caused by its institutions or by its servants in the performance of their duties.”

The Commission declined to comment.

‘Puppets of Putin’

In July’s no-confidence debate in Strasbourg, von der Leyen said Piperea’s arguments were taken “right from the oldest playbook of extremists.”

“We see the alarming threat from extremist parties who want to polarize our societies with disinformation,” the Commission president said, adding there is “ample proof that many are supported by our enemies and by their puppet masters in Russia or elsewhere.”

Manfred Weber, president of von der Leyen’s center-right European People’s Party, described the signatories to the motion as “puppets of Putin,” adding “Putin will like what his friends are doing here.” The chair of the Socialists and Democrats, Iratxe García, referred to Piperea and the signatories of the motion as allies of Putin.

Piperea filed the motion of no confidence which forced a debate and vote against von der Leyen in mid-July, after gathering enough signatures in opposition to her secret texts from 2021 with Albert Bourla, the chief executive of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. 

During the no-confidence debate in July, Piperea himself accused the “non-democratic” Commission of making the EU decision-making process “opaque and discretionary” and raising “fears of abuse and corruption.”