The man trying to bring down Ursula von der Leyen

Telegraph

7 days ago

Gheorghe Piperea entered politics only last year, but now he wants to topple the president of the European Commission.
The Eurosceptic conservative MEP has forced Ursula von der Leyen into a vote of no confidence because of secret text messages with a pharmaceuticals boss during the pandemic.
After securing the necessary 72 signatures from MEPs, Mr Piperea made Mrs von der Leyen the first commission president to face the censure for more than a decade.
'I have succeeded in opening a Pandora's box,' the Romanian lawyer told The Telegraph, predicting that Mrs von der Leyen's days were now numbered.
Losing a no-confidence motion would trigger the resignation of the EU executive and begin the complex procedure of appointing 27 new commissioners.
Pro-EU parties are circling the wagons to defend Mrs von der Leyen against the coalition of Right-wing Eurosceptics and she is expected to comfortably survive the vote on Thursday.
Mr Piperea, 55, has accepted that he won't oust her next week.
But he hopes it will be the beginning of the end for the German politician, claiming she could be forced to resign by October amid growing anger from within her own centre-Right European People's Party (EPP).
Mrs von der Leyen must first face a European Parliament debate in Strasbourg on Monday in the midst of dissatisfaction with her high-handed, centralised and opaque leadership style.
Liberal, socialist and green MEPs have been angry that Mrs von der Leyen redirected funds intended to fight poverty to a rearmament programme, he said.
The European Parliament has planned to sue the commission in the EU's top court after being excluded from the decision-making process in the bloc's efforts to ramp up defence spending.
Mr Piperea's no-confidence motion centres on secret messages about vaccine supplies between the EU boss and Albert Bourla, the chief executive of Pfizer.
In May, EU judges ruled that the commission was wrong to deny a New York Times journalist's request to access the texts, which were sent at the height of the pandemic when Mrs von der Leyen's administration was negotiating vaccine supplies to the bloc.
They found that the refusal broke the principles of good administration and transparency after rejecting Brussels' arguments that the messages were too 'ephemeral' to qualify as documents under its transparency rules, as well as claims that they could not be found.
'She is a leader with an obvious tendency towards totalitarianism,' said Mr Piperea, pointing to how Mrs von der Leyen's commission bypassed MEPs when creating a €150 billion loan programme to increase defence spending on the continent.
'The commission has progressively taken powers from the member states but also from the European Parliament itself.
'What I'm doing here is to try to clean up our democracy and consolidate our democracy in the European Union.
'The treaty says that all decisions of the commission should be done in a transparent manner. The commission is breaking the rule of law,' added Mr Piperea, who was elected under Romania's populist AUR party for the first time in 2024's European elections.
'Militant on the barricades'
Despite expressing admiration for Britain's political accountability, he said Romania could not afford to copy Brexit and needed to reform the EU from the inside.
He has described himself as a 'militant on the barricades'.
He admitted he 'doesn't hate' the notoriety gained by AUR, which was founded in 2019 and became Romania's second largest party last year after making a name for itself with anti-vaccination campaigns.
Mr Piperea believes Mrs von Der Leyen is living on borrowed time as she has come under fire within her own party for – among other things – her net zero plans.
'She has a majority, but it is a toxic majority for von der Leyen. A lot of criticism comes now from her own party and especially about this madness of the green deal,' he said.
'Maybe because of this hostility in her majority, she will be forced to resign by the end of the year – perhaps in October or November.'
Such claims have been given short shrift in Brussels.
In the 2024 European Parliament elections, Mrs von der Leyen's commission was approved by a majority of 370 MEPs of 688 votes.
Sacking the commission would trigger a period of uncertainty when the EU is facing a possible trade war with the US and Russian aggression in Ukraine.
But the motion has drawn support from far-Right MEPs tired of her overreaching.
One EPP MEP had supported the motion against Mrs von der Leyen but withdrew after pressure from the party's top brass.
Mr Piperea has been a part of the Georgia Meloni-dominated European Conservatives and Reformist Group that was founded by David Cameron's Tories before Brexit.
Ms Meloni has worked closely with Mrs von der Leyen on migration.
Mr Piperea refused to comment on whether he had come under pressure from his own group to drop the no-confidence motion.
Pro-EU conservatives have been furious they will be forced to take part in a debate and an embarrassing vote.
'It's a disgrace for the European people,' said Manfred Weber, the leader of the EPP, which is the parliament's largest group that sits in Brussels and Strasbourg.
'Putin's puppets in the European Parliament are trying to undermine Europe's unity and bring the commission down in times of global turmoil and economic crisis,' he told The Telegraph.
Jacques Santer, the former commission president, resigned in 1999 instead of facing a no-confidence vote that was expected to succeed amid accusations of fraud and nepotism.
However, Jean-Claude Junker, Mrs von der Leyen's predecessor, easily survived a no-confidence motion in 2014 over allegations that he had struck sweetheart tax deals with multinationals while he was the prime minister of Luxembourg.