BRUSSELSHungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is leading calls for the removal of the head of the bloc’s powerful executive arm, who will be the subject of a confidence vote by European Union MPs on Thursday.
A group of hard-right legislators introduced the censure motion against the European Commission president, the first to be introduced in the European Parliament in more than ten years. A two-thirds majority vote is needed for it to pass.
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If she loses, von der Leyen might have to step down, but she is almost certain to prevail because the majority of the assembly’s political parties have indicated they will vote against the proposal. It is not anticipated that she will be present at the voting in Strasbourg, France.
A variety of accusations are made against von der Leyen in the motion, including improper use of EU money, private conversations with the head of the pharmaceutical company Pfizer, and meddling in the elections in Germany and Romania.
The vote will be the moment of truth, according to Orbn on Facebook, with the imperial class in Brussels on one side and patriots and common sense on the other. There is no way around it; you have to make a decision.
He wrote: “Madam President, accountability is the foundation of leadership.” It’s time to leave! Orb has been consulted by von der Leyen’s panel over the attempts to reestablish democracy by his fervently nationalist government. Hungary’s access to billions of euros in EU funds has been blocked by the commission.
Von der Leyen, who spearheaded the EU’s effort to discover vaccines for around 450 million people during the pandemic, and her European People’s Party, the largest political party in the assembly, have come under fire for the decision.
They are charged with aligning themselves with the hard right in order to advance their goals. After a year, there was a noticeable shift to the right in the EU parliament.
The Socialists and Democrats, the second-largest group, have claimed that the EPP’s carelessness and deceit were the cause of the censure motion.
Iratxe Garc a Prez, the head of S&D, asked the EPP during Monday’s debate: Who do you want to rule with? Would you rather rule alongside those who seek to destroy Europe or alongside those of us who strive daily to construct it?
The EPP has notably cooperated with the extreme right to fix the von der Leyen s new commissioners when they were questioned for their competence for their posts last year, and to oppose an ethics body meant to .
