Dusting off the well-worn Russiagate playbook, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen suggested that an effort to dethrone her from her top position in Brussels was the product of interference from Moscow.
Facing the first significant attempt to remove her from office with a no-confidence vote this week, over her refusal to disclose text messages with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla amid negotiations to secure coronavirus vaccines, EU chief von der Leyen branded her opponents in the European Parliament as “extremists”.
“We should be under no illusion about the threats our democracy faces. We have entered into an age of struggle between democracy and illiberalism. We see the alarming threat from extremist parties who want to polarise our societies with disinformation,” she said in a speech in Strasbourg on Monday, according to Euronews.
“There is no proof that they have any answers, but there is ample proof that many are supported by our enemies and by their puppet masters in Russia or elsewhere,” the German politician continued. “And you only have to look at some of the signatories of this motion to understand what I mean.”
The motion was brought forward by Romanian MEP Gheorghe Piperea and has drawn the support of 77 other EU parliamentarians, thereby surpassing the threshold for a no-confidence vote to be held on Thursday.
While von der Leyen’s governing coalition has been weakened in recent months, with Socialist and Green MEPs angered over the mild watering down of the European Green Deal, it is unlikely that the motion will secure the two-thirds vote needed to oust the EU chief.
However, Piperea has claimed that this week’s confidence vote is just the first step in weakening her position and that he hopes that she will ultimately be forced to resign by the end of the year.
Speaking to London’s Daily Telegraph newspaper last week, the Romanian MEP said: “She is a leader with an obvious tendency towards totalitarianism… 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.”
Responding to von der Leyen’s allegations of being a Russian “puppet”, Piperea compared her stance to a quote from Soviet dictator Vladimir Lenin, writing on X: “Those who are not with us are against us (V.I. Lenin)… Those who are not with Me, are friends of Putin (Ursula von der Leyen).”
In addition to citing the vaccine text message scandal, for which the European Court of Justice officially rebuked the EU chief in May, the no-confidence measure also accused von der Leyen of being involved in the “misapplication” of the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) censorship regime in national elections and for the “abusive use” of Article 122 of the EU treaty to push through a €150-billion defence loan programme without the consent of the EU Parliament.
To these charges, the globalist politician replied: “We can follow Mr Piperea down his world of conspiracies and alleged sinister plots by what he calls ‘Brussels’, or we can clearly call this out for what it is: another crude attempt to drive a wedge between our institutions, between the pro-European, pro-democratic forces of this house.”
The no-confidence vote has drawn the support of the populist Patriots of Europe group in the EU Parliament. Chairman of the coalition and president of France’s National Rally, Jordan Bardella, said: “Europe deserves better than silence. Better than opacity. Better than the bureaucratic authoritarianism of Ursula von der Leyen, who leads the European Commission with a Jupiterian verticality, disconnected from realities, peoples, and the true founding values of our continent.”
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