EU’s top executive official Ursula von der Leyen, a German politician, will face a potential no-confidence vote in the European Parliament, a rare measure taken only three times in the history of the bloc. 

Gheorghe Piperea, a right-wing Romanian member of the European Parliament, sought a no-confidence vote against von der Leyen on the grounds that she compromised the union’s transparency principles based on the rule of law by reaching a vaccine deal with Pfizer, a German company, through unofficial channels. 

"An amendment which has a value of something like €35 billion, of course, it's completely unusual to negotiate an amendment to such a big contract by a series of SMSs," the Romanian politician told Türkiye’s Anadolu Agency in a recent interview. 

Piperea is an ally of George Simion, the leader of the Eurosceptic party Alliance of Union of Romanians (AUR), who recently lost the presidential election against a pro-EU candidate in a close contest. Simion and his allies like Calin Georgescu, whose first run victory was cancelled by Romania’s high court, accused the EU leadership of election meddling. 

But Ecaterina Matoi, an independent Bucharest-based security and political consultant, does not agree that the proposed no-confidence vote should only be seen as a retaliatory move by Piperea and his AUR party, whose Eurosceptic views motivated him to go after her. 

Matoi sees some “relevance and accuracy of the accusations brought against von der Leyen and some other people connected to her”, ranging from the vaccine controversy called Pfizergate to her centralisation policies like “misusing” of Article 122 of the Treaty on Functioning of the European Union to pushing a Rearm Europe defence initiative, which is seen as overstepping EU authority.

The approval of the European Council, the collective body of the EU heads of states, is mandatory for the no-confidence motion – backed by more than 70 MEPs – to reach the floor of the European Parliament. 

According to Piperea, it is very unlikely that the European Council will allow the vote and prefer “not to be forced to give an explanation about those SMSs”, exchanged between von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla.   

“I am almost 100% sure about this," Piperea adds.

Pfizergate  

While Piperea’s motion might have Eurosceptic political motivations against von der Leyen and her Commission’s centralisation policies at the expense of member-states’ sovereignty, it also has a legal ground in regard to her vaccine dealings with Pfizer. 

In 2022, New York Times journalist Matina Stevis-Gridneff demanded that the Commission release the text messages between von der Leyen and the Pfizer CEO on Covid-19 vaccine negotiations. While the Commission rejected the journalist’s request, the EU's top court ruled against this decision in May, urging the release of her 2021 text messages.   

But the Commission did not find any Covid-related communication because text messages are “short-lived”, according to its official statement. 

The court, like many experts, found this response illogical and demanded “credible explanations” to help understand why those documents could not be found. 

Emmanuel Dupuy, a French political scientist at the Catholic University of Lille, says that von der Leyen acts under the assumption that “no one is above her” and because of that, she takes “bold decisions”, such as her vaccine negotiation with Pfizer.

“There was no fair concurrency among the companies which were creating the vaccine,” Dupuy tells TRT World, referring to the EU’s controversial vaccine policies during the pandemic. 

Some argue that the EU’s top official “has some interests” to make those vaccine decisions, adds Dupuy, also the president of the Institute for European Perspective and Security Studies (IPSE), a think-tank focused on track-two diplomacy and strategic analysis. 

Brewing anger on centralisation 

But all this anger against von der Leyen is not just about vaccines. 

Piperea, a well-known law professor, also accuses von der Leyen of interfering in Romanian and German elections via the EU’s Digital Services Act, according to Matoi. 

This motion matters not only to Romanians but also to other EU citizens, who have difficulty digesting various EU decisions, aiming for more centralisation across the 27-member states, which violate their sovereignty, she says. 

As a result, she finds Piperea’s no-confidence vote “very important” for the debate on the EU’s future.  

Von der Leyen’s Commission is “increasingly centralising the EU’s decision-making process, bypassing the European Parliament’s control,” says Muzaffer Senel, a visiting scholar of the Department of Politics at Binghamton University.

Among other centralisation policies, the Commission is deciding on “budget expenditures without the approval of the EU Parliament,” which angers not only right-wing members like Piperea but also its President Roberta Metsola and his centrist allies, according to Senel. 

“For example, the EU Commission recently used emergency clauses to implement the €150 billion defence credit plan known as SAFE without parliamentary approval,” Senel tells TRT World. While Metsola criticises von der Leyen’s conduct, she says that the measure is “justified” because the EU faced “an existential challenge”, a vague reference to Russia.  

“It gives the impression that she is systematically and deliberately bypassing the EU Parliament. This kind of un-consultative leadership style is described by most MEPs as authoritarianism,” says Senel. 

This poses a problem in terms of democratic accountability, bringing out once again the EU's old democratic deficit issue.

Democratic deficit refers to an academic criticism, which says that EU institutions' decision-making procedures do not have adequate democratic legitimacy, being less influenced by ordinary citizens than officials like von der Leyen.  

She is acting with an ideological motivation to impose a supranational wisdom of Europe over member-states, says Duyup. 

“Critics accuse her of bypassing democratic procedures by pushing through major deregulatory measures, such as simplifying climate and agricultural laws, without proper consultation with the Parliament or civil society,” says Abdulaziz Ahmet Yasar, a Hamburg-based expert on the EU. 

The no-confidence vote “highlights growing frustration over her leadership style and the EU Commission’s accountability,” Yasar tells TRT World. 

Has a no-confidence vote ever happened? 

There are very few instances of no-confidence motions in the European Parliament. 

“It’s extremely rare and no president has ever been removed this way. The most notable case was in 1999, when the entire European Commission led by the Luxembourgish politician Jacques Santer resigned collectively before a no-confidence vote could take place, following a corruption and mismanagement scandal,” Yasar says. 

In 2005, there was a motion against the Jose Manuel Barroso Commission and in 2014 another no-confidence vote was brought to parliament floors against the Jean-Claude Juncker Commission, but both motions were rejected, says Senel. 

The required threshold of the acceptance of a no-confidence vote is very high. A two-thirds majority of votes should be cast, and an absolute majority of all MEPs need to approve it.