If there are no surprises in the chamber, the Ursula-bis European Commission will have the confidence with a simple majority of voters in the Assembly in Strasbourg on 27 November 2024 and the new commissioners will enter the Berlaymont Palace on 1 December after formal approval by the European Council by qualified majority.
Ursula von der Leyen obtained 401 votes on 18 July 2024, i.e. an absolute majority of the 720 MEPs, many more than those who voted for her on 17 July 2019, confirming the ‘Ursula majority’ that EPP, Social Democrats and Liberals with which the Greens were associated both because of Ursula von der Leyen’s focus on that group at the time and because of her confirmation of the European Green Pact with a clear closure towards nationalist-oriented groups.
Therefore, the three extreme right-wing groups remained outside the ‘Ursula majority’, namely the ‘Patriots’ inspired by Viktor Orban (Fidesz), Marine Le Pen (RN) and Matteo Salvini (LN), the ‘Conservatives’ inspired by Giorgia Meloni (FdI) and Mateusz Morawiecki (PiS) together with the ‘Sovereignists’ inspired by Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla AFD) and Santiago Abascal (Vox).
From 18 July 2024 onwards, it has become increasingly apparent that the ‘Ursula majority’ is considered by the EPP and especially by its leader Manfred Weber as an ‘occasional’ coalition due to political and electoral convictions, but also because the European Union is a hybrid or hermaphroditic system.
In it, the confederal and intergovernmental component prevails over the community component. In addition, the relationship of trust between the European Parliament and the European Commission cannot be compared to that which exists between a Government and a Parliament in national systems of parliamentary democracy. Finally, the commissioners are formally the expression of the member States but de facto of the national Executives.
As of 18 July 2024, Governments with nationalist influences have increased or are increasing in France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Romania; the ‘traffic light’ coalition in Germany has entered a crisis with early elections set for 23 February 2025 and Donald Trump’s victory will strengthen the sovereignist area in the world and also in Europe by giving oxygen to Manfred Weber and the EPP in the European Parliament.
This will make it easier for the ‘two-oven’ method – according to the expression invented by Giulio Andreotti – i.e. the choice of occasional centre-right or centre-left alliances where the former have more elective affinities than the latter on the policy of rejecting asylum seekers and on the demolition of the European Green Pact as well as on the prevalence of national competences over European ones.
From what has emerged in the meetings of the political groups and within them, it appears very likely that there will be a substantial variation – numerical and political – of the majority that voted in favour of Ursula von der Leyen on 18 July 2024 due to the defection of the Greens or a majority of them (53), of some 30 Socialists (French, German, Walloon Belgian and Italian independents) but also of a few Liberals and, perhaps, on the other side of the hemicycle, of the Spanish EPP (23).
The ‘Ursula majority’ was formally confirmed with the ‘cooperation platform’: the platform is not a nine-point coalition contract between the EPP, S&D and Renew that takes up Ursula von der Leyen’s priorities of 18 July 2024 with a majority from which the Greens were excluded (at the EPP’s request).
The platform contains no commitment from the EPP to respect the ‘cordon sanitaire’ with the ‘Patriots’ and the ‘Sovereignists’, but also no commitment to enlarge the majority to the ECR, a group that has never recognised the legitimacy of this ‘cordon’.
It is worth remembering that the green light for the Spanish Socialist candidate Teresa Ribera came from the EPP only with the clarification – on the basis of a formal commitment only from the EPP that could however involve Ursula von der Leyen on the basis of Art. 17.6.c TEU which gives her the power to demand the resignation of a member of the Commission – that Teresa Ribera must resign immediately in the event of any legal charge or proceeding against her in connection with the floods in the Valencian Community.
The Social Democrats and Liberals, on the other hand, ‘expect Raffaele Fitto to be totally independent of his government, to commit himself fully to applying the conditionality mechanism of the Rule of law and to work for its strengthening in the European Union’ by calling for Ursula von der Leyen to be given control of the cohesion funds from 2028 onwards under the new Multiannual Financial Framework.
The defections of the Greens together with part of the Spanish Social Democrats, Liberals and EPP to which the votes against of the Left (46) and the Non-attached (32) will be added, will, however, be offset by the favourable vote of Fratelli d’Italia MPs (24) – together with Belgian (3) and Czech (3) conservatives who had already voted in favour of Ursula von der Leyen on 18 July 2024 but not the Polish PiS (20) who voted instead in favour of the first von der Leyen Commission in November 2019 – thus enabling the new European Commission to secure a simple majority of voters knowing that abstentions do not count as a vote against.
With the prospect of a gradual breaking of the ‘cordon sanitaire’ towards the extreme right-wingers and the entry of nationalists into the legislative decision-making mechanisms and political work of the European Parliament, the European institutional system – whose effectiveness has long been based on the dialectic or conflict between the European Parliament as the representative of European interests and the Council of the Union as the representative of national interests -. is thus in danger of evaporating.
In addition, the European Commission’s position of inter-institutional equidistance is now in danger of being called into question by Ursula von der Leyen’s openness to the right of the hemicycle and the absolute majority of EPP, ECR and Patriots commissioners (17 out of 28) in the new European executive.
The political ‘antibodies’ to counter the ‘two ovens’ method and the consolidation of a new centre-right coalition can only lie in the common political will of the Social Democrats, Liberals and Greens together with part of the Left to open immediate negotiations with the most dialogue-open sectors of the EPP by proposing to accompany the vote of confidence in the new European Commission with a programmatic political Resolution for the entire European legislature, which could thus be formulated exceptionally on the basis of Rule 126 of the Rules of Procedure:
MOTION FOR A PROGRAMMATIC RESOLUTION TO CLOSE THE DEBATE ON THE APPROVAL OF THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION
- ‘We are convinced that it is necessary to create a European public space animated by the principles of parliamentary and participatory democracy, i.e. by a stable alliance between the major European political forces and the representative organisations of civil society to ensure respect for the rule of law in its essential elements: the supremacy of the law, the right to have rights, non-discrimination, the separation of powers, sanctions against the abuse of powers.
- We are convinced that a more integrated Europe must safeguard and enhance cultural diversity starting from the cities, within the framework of the multi-level identity that characterises the European model, because it is at the local level that cohesion and integration succeed or fail.
- We are committed to fighting to guarantee the right to asylum and the reception of those fleeing wars, political persecution, hunger, environmental disasters and land exploitation within the framework of a true inclusion policy involving all Member States and local communities; that the cooperation policy with the Mediterranean and Africa be renewed and strengthened with a European investment plan based on public/private partnership; that migration flows be governed with supranational measures and instruments, intensifying the involvement of trade unions and business organisations together with voluntary associations and NGOs.
- We call for the right to external security to be guaranteed, proceeding along the path of a gradual integration of national military instruments at the service of peacebuilding and peacekeeping and of a common foreign policy; and for the right to internal security to be guaranteed, strengthening the fight against organised crime, corruption and transnational terrorism, laying the foundations of a European criminal law, strengthening the powers of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office and creating a common intelligence agency with full respect for the prerogatives of the EP and national parliaments.
- We are convinced that the Economic and Monetary Union must be endowed with an economic government based on political institutions of a democratic nature: overcoming the distinction between supranational monetary policy, intergovernmental economic policies and national social policies, respecting the principle that the euro is the currency of the entire European Union, with the obligation for all Member States to adopt it, creating the political and financial instruments to ensure shared prosperity.
- We call for the adoption of a multi-year budget with a five-year maturity declining annually according to short-term needs, based on a fiscal capacity independent of national budgets and endowed with real own resources, strengthened by loans and mortgages to ensure long-term innovative investments, and endowed with the necessary amount to ensure public goods with a European dimension for citizens, starting with health, intergenerational solidarity, gender equality and the fight against all discrimination and inequalities.
- We call for the approval of a new ‘European Green and Social Deal’ based on effective measures to promote convergence between member states, reduce inequalities between regions and between citizens, flanked by a strong European cohesion policy; for a European welfare system to be given substance, giving full and binding implementation to the ‘Social Action Plan’ adopted in Porto and creating the conditions for a renewed social dialogue as a characterising element of economic democracy.
- We are convinced that it is necessary to make industrial, technological and scientific policy a model of ecological transition, taking into account its productive fabric essentially composed of SMEs and the world of cooperation, and fully implementing the goals for sustainable development adopted by the United Nations in 2015 with the 2030 Agenda.
- We call for the creation of a true federal European citizenship, endowed with an autonomous core of individual and collective, civil, political, economic and social rights on the basis of the Charter of Rights, reinforced by adherence to the revised Turin Social Charter.
- We call for the next parliamentary term to be devoted to a constituent process of a united, solidary and democratic Europe on the basis of a Basic Law to be democratically approved through a pan-European referendum among the peoples and states that want it’.
Pier Virgilio Dastoli