Parliament approves von der Leyen’s right-leaning Commission for Dec. 1 start

STRASBOURG — European Union lawmakers approved Ursula von der Leyen’s team for her second term, after a months-long process that began with June’s European election ended following weeks of political infighting among the bloc’s left- and right-wing groups.

“Finding ways to work with each other and overcoming fragmentation. This is what I and all 26 women and men with me will strive for every single day. We are ready to get to work immediately,” said European Commission President von der Leyen on Wednesday after the vote.

In the end, it was the combined votes of right- and the left-leaning groups that allowed for the commissioners to pass untouched, the first time since 1999 that no country’s nominee for the Commission has been rejected.

370 members of the European Parliament voted on Wednesday in favor of the new right-leaning group of 26 commissioners (27 in total including von der Leyen; one from each country in the bloc) to start a five-year term from Dec. 1.

282 MEPs voted against and 36 abstained.

The center-right European People’s Party (EPP) holds 14 of those positions, including the chair of the Commission president. Despite losses in June’s election, the liberals will hold five commissioners, followed by the Socialists and Democrats (S&D) with four and the hard-right European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) with one. 

While the college received more votes than von der Leyen’s nomination in June, the Commission is the least supported by the Parliament since 1993, when it was awarded the right to vote on the cohort.

Since September, von der Leyen has compiled her commissioners to consolidate her own hold over the EU’s policy-making. She assigned six executive vice presidents (Estonia’s Kaja Kallas, Italy’s Raffaele Fitto, Romania’s Roxana Mînzatu, France’s Stéphane Séjourné, Spain’s Teresa Ribera and Finland’s Henna Virkkunen) to manage the “regular” commissioners. 

The decision to include right-winger Fitto as one of the commission’s vice presidents upset the S&D and Renew, who rebuked von der Leyen and the EPP for giving the ECR a leadership role.

Some lawmakers within the S&D said they voted against the college, referring to the configuration of the Commission after Fitto’s approval and the green light given to Hungary’s Olivér Várhelyi. French and German Socialists voted against and abstained, respectively.

Nearly half of the Greens, who supported von der Leyen in June, did not vote in favor of her top team as a protest vote against the inclusion of Fitto.

Though von der Leyen’s commissioners lost support from the Greens, Meloni’s Brothers of Italy and Belgium’s New Flemish Alliance lawmakers with the hard-right ECR supported the Commission despite opposing von der Leyen ‘s second term back in June.

In the weeks prior, all groups spanning from the ECR to the Greens facilitated the approval of all commissioners in individual screening sessions, as rules required a two-thirds majority.

“My majority, if I may say so, is [becoming] reality and that makes me happy because we need stability in a broader sense in the European Parliament, otherwise we cannot deliver on the interest for Europe,” an exuberant Manfred Weber, the EPP’s chief in the Parliament, said at a press conference in Strasbourg.