The European Parliament has rejected a motion of no confidence against the European Commission led by Ursula von der Leyen. The vote, held in Strasbourg, concluded with 175 MEPs in favor, 360 against, and 18 abstentions out of 553 members present. This result falls significantly short of the required two-thirds majority - 480 votes - needed to dismiss the Commission. All 26 commissioners remain in office.

The motion was initiated by Romanian MEP Gheorghe Piperea of the European Conservatives and Reformists Group. It is the ninth such vote in the history of the European Parliament, and the first targeting von der Leyen’s Commission. Like all previous attempts, this one also failed to pass. The motivation behind the motion centered on accusations that von der Leyen refused to disclose text messages exchanged with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla in 2021, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, concerning vaccine supply contracts worth billions of euros.

In her remarks during the debate earlier this week, von der Leyen dismissed the allegations, stating that all EU member states were involved in negotiating the vaccine procurement and implying that the attack against her was politically motivated. She suggested that those supporting the motion included adversaries of the European project, explicitly mentioning Russia.

The proposal also criticized the Commission for allegedly interfering in national elections through the misapplication of the Digital Services Act (DSA). Moreover, the motion claimed the Commission had wrongly used the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) as the legal basis for the SAFE Regulation - a €150 billion defense financing initiative.

Among the MEPs backing the motion were three from Bulgaria: Stanislav Stoyanov, Petar Volgin, and Rada Laikova, all affiliated with the far-right Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN) group and Bulgaria's nationalist Revival party.

Von der Leyen was not present for the vote itself as she is currently in Italy. However, she had taken part in the parliamentary debate on July 7, where she directly addressed the accusations and defended her Commission’s actions.