Another motion of no-confidence: last week it was France, this week it was the European Union itself. EU prime minister Ursula von der Leyen survived overnight a motion of censure in her government (or “commission”) moved by the far right, defeating it by 360 votes to 175.
That already looks a rather more decisive victory than that of François Bayrou, whose opponents mustered 189 votes in a substantially smaller parliament. And in one way it’s even more secure than that, because the EU’s rules require a two-thirds majority for a no-confidence vote to be carried; in France it only needs a majority, although it must be a majority of the whole number of MPs, not just those present and voting.
In other words, in the French case there is no difference between voting “no” and abstaining; only the “yes” votes are tabulated. But in Strasbourg it does make a difference: those who abstain or fail to vote are making a statement, showing that while they are not willing to go all the way by expressing a lack of confidence, their support cannot be counted on either.
And on this occasion there were a lot of them. The European parliament has 720 members; 18 registered an abstention, but 167 simply didn’t vote at all (actually 166 – one seat is currently vacant). No doubt some were absent for unavoidable reasons, but most were making a conscious decision to sit on the fence. (The official recorded vote is here; Politico’s analysis provides a more user-friendly version.)
As you’d expect, von der Leyen’s support came mostly from the three groups in the centre of the political spectrum, but even there it was well short of unanimity. Out of the 399 MPs belonging to either her own centre-right group (188) the centre-left (136) or the liberals (75), only two supported the no-confidence motion, but 75 abstained or failed to vote. At the other extreme, the two far-right groups (Patriots and ESN) voted solidly in favor, with just 13 of their 112 MPs being absent.
The Eurosceptic group ECR, which von der Leyen has worked hard to reach out to, also gave her little support: 39 in favor of the motion, three against, 37 abstaining or not voting. The far left was even less inclined to go on the record, with 33 of its 46 MPs abstaining or not voting; the other 13 supported the censure. But the Greens mostly backed von der Leyen: none of their 53 MPs voted against her, and 33 of them voted with her.
So the commission is safe for the time being, but the fact that a no-confidence motion got this far – the first to be moved since 2014 – is a bad sign. Much worse is the fact that both the centre-left and the liberals contemplated telling their members to abstain, which, although it would not have led to the motion being carried, would have made von der Leyen’s position untenable.
Despite lacking some of the features of a routine national parliament, the European parliament has reached (by a somewhat different route) the same difficulty that we’ve seen in many European countries. The growth of the extremes, and especially of the far right, has meant that there are no longer enough votes to sustain two rival mainstream parties or coalitions. If mainstream forces can’t work with one another, they inevitably open the door to the extremes.
This places the centre-right in a bind. It can try to bring elements of the far right within the tent, governing with their support and hoping to tame them, or it can maintain a cordon sanitaire against them and govern in alliance with the centre and centre-left. What it can’t do, however, is attempt both at once, as von der Leyen has been doing.
Her concessions to the far right over immigration and climate change [link added] have failed to win her new support, even from the supposed “moderates” of ECR. All she has succeeded in doing is arousing suspicion and disaffection to her left. But the centre and centre-left are trapped too, because they can’t reach a majority without her, and parliament can’t be dissolved early for a fresh election; it has to somehow carry on until 2029.
If von der Leyen really has been given a final chance, she needs to make the most of it.
The World is Not Enough 