Ursula von der Leyen’s future as EU chief rests on knife-edge as MEPs prepare to vote

Ursula von der Leyen spoke out against “the extreme polarisation of our societies” as she appealed to the European parliament to give her a second term as European Commission president.

MEPs will decide whether to confirm Ursula von der Leyen as Commission president in a knife-edge vote later on Thursday that will either result in another five-year mandate for the EU executive’s first female leader or tip the bloc into a summer crisis.

Addressing MEPs in the Strasbourg chamber, von der Leyen offered something for the mainstream pro-European groups she hopes will support her. In an appeal to her own centre-right European People’s party, she promised a “burden reduction” of EU law to help small businesses.

Nodding to the Greens, liberals and Socialists, she vowed to stay the course on EU climate plans, promising in her first 100 days a “new clean industrial deal” to channel investment into decarbonising manufacturing and green tech.

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Under her plans, for the first time the EU would have a European commissioner in charge of housing and “European affordable housing plan” to address a crisis of high rents and unaffordable homes, a key priority for the Socialists.

She reaffirmed the EU’s support for Ukraine and issued her sternest criticism yet of Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán’s recent trip to Moscow. “This so-called peace mission was nothing but an appeasement mission,” she told MEPs, generating the biggest applause line of the 50-minute speech.

And she promised to triple the number of European border propose and coastguards to 30,000, attacking what she called Russia’s attempts to exploit the misery of Yemeni nationals by luring them to Europe and “pushing them deliberately at the Finnish border”.

Appealing to MEPs she said: “ I will never let the extreme polarisation of our societies become accepted. I will never accept that demagogues and extremists destroy our European way of life,” adding she was ready to work with “all the democratic forces in this house”.

Von der Leyen was nominated by EU leaders last month for a second five-year term leading the EU executive, which is responsible for drafting and enforcing EU law. Now she needs to secure the backing of at least 361 MEPs, a simple majority of the newly elected, more right-leaning parliament.

On paper, von der Leyen has the numbers, as the three groups that officially backed her in 2019 – the centre-right EPP, the Socialists and Democrats and the Renew centrists – have 401 MEPs.

But European parliament groups are not very disciplined, and experts expect about 10-15% of MEPs to deviate from the party line under cover of the secret ballot. She cannot even count on the unanimous support of her own EPP group.

The Renew group could be particularly difficult for von der Leyen – its four Fianna Fáil members have said they will not vote for her, arguing that she has been too supportive of Israel in its war on Hamas in Gaza. Billy Kelleher, a vice-president of Renew, said under her watch the EU had stopped being “seen as an honest broker in the Middle East peace process”.

Since her nomination, von der Leyen has spent hours in windowless meeting rooms with different political groups, listening to their wishlists and appealing for their votes.

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The Greens, potential kingmakers with 53 MEPs, tend to be more disciplined than other groups but have insisted they will not decide how to vote until von der Leyen appears on the floor of the Strasbourg assembly on Thursday morning.

“We had good discussions with the president,” Bas Eickhout, the Green group’s co-president, said ahead of her speech. “On the basis of the political guidelines [her programme] and her speech we will decide.”

The Greens voted against von der Leyen in 2019, meaning she scraped through with only nine votes to spare.

If von der Leyen loses, EU leaders have one month to propose an alternative candidate. As well as creating a leadership vacuum, a rejection would trigger huge uncertainty about the bloc’s direction, as the war in Ukraine grinds on and Europe wrestles with how to deal with the possible return of Donald Trump.

“This is a much more difficult European setting than five years ago. We are very well aware. And I think we take that into consideration,” Eickhout said. “So we are not expecting a full European green programme from this candidate. But clearly it needs to have some clear lines.”

On Tuesday the Greens endorsed Roberta Metsola, the centre-right Maltese MEP, for a second term as speaker of the European parliament, in a sign that the group is leaning towards von der Leyen.

Some EU sources suggested that the secret ballot could work in von der Leyen’s favour, allowing MEPs to loudly criticise her and discreetly vote yes to avoid an institutional crisis.

One wildcard, however, is Giorgia Meloni’s European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group. In the European Council, the Italian prime minister abstained on von der Leyen’s reappointment, furious at being excluded from a deal on top jobs hashed out between six male leaders from three mainstream political groups.

But since Meloni came to power she has had a fruitful relationship with von der Leyen’s commission, which has released funds under a €194bn post-Covid recovery plan for Italy and followed Rome’s lead in setting up deals with African countries designed to curb the number of people crossing the Mediterranean to reach Europe.

The 78 ECR MEPs are likely to split, with Poland’s Law and Justice voting against von der Leyen and the Civic Democratic party, led by Czech prime minister, Petr Fiala, supporting her. After a recent meeting with von der Leyen, the ECR group tweeted that the next commission “needs a serious change of course”.

The Socialists and Democrats leader, Iratxe García Pérez, told Spain’s El Diaro her group would not give von der Leyen “a blank cheque”, but also that it would not make its decision based on other groups.

David McAllister, a senior EPP MEP and close ally of von der Leyen, said there would be no second chance if she does not get through on Thursday.

“That means throughout the summer the European Union would be in an institutional crisis because the whole package agreed between the political groups after the elections would be endangered,” he said, referring to the complex deal on three top jobs that takes into account geography and political affiliation. “We would not have clear leadership at the helm of the commission,” he added.

“The enemies, the opponents of a united Europe would be laughing their heads off.”