Cypriot MEP Geadi signs no-confidence motion against von der Leyen

Cypriot member of the European parliament Geadis Geadi has signed a motion of no confidence against European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, which is set to be voted upon by MEPs on Monday.

Geadi, who belongs to Elam, is one of 109 MEPs to have signed the motion, with high profile cosignatories including French far-right leader Jordan Bardella and Greece’s Afroditi Latinopoulou, who leads the far-right Voice of Reason party.

The motion centres its complaints about von der Leyen and her commission around the matter of the trade deal between the European Union and South American trade bloc Mercosur, which is to be signed by her in Paraguay on Saturday.

It said the commission has “ignored strong and repeated opposition from several national parliaments, from this parliament, and from European farmers and breeders” and that it “circumvented the political and legal obstacles to ratification it would have faced by splitting the agreement into two separate legal instruments in order to bypass national parliaments”.

Additionally, it said the trade deal “threatens the future of the European agricultural sector by opening the market to products that do not comply with European environmental, social, animal welfare, and sanitary and phytosanitary standards”.

This, it said, creates “unfair competition that endangers the livelihoods of thousands of European farmers and breeders”.

“The EU-Mercosur agreement is contrary to the interests of the EU and its citizens as it imperils a wide range of agricultural sectors, exposing European farmers, workers and small and medium sized enterprises to unfair competition, asymmetric concessions and strategic dependencies that run counter to the EU’s declared objectives of resilience and autonomy,” it said.

As such, it added, “the EU and the commission are weaker today than ever due to the persistent failure of [von der Leyen] to listen to our farmers and citizens and to respond to the EU’s most urgent challenges”.

The vote will be the fourth no-confidence motion von der Leyen has faced in the last six months, with the most recent two having both taken place on the same day in October last year.

On that occasion, the first motion was put forward by MEPs from the far-right Patriots for Europe group, and won the support of 179 MEPs, but was handily voted down by 378 who offered their support for von der Leyen – well short of the two-thirds parliamentary majority which would have been required to unseat her.

Of the Cypriots, Elam’s Geadis Geadi and independent Fidias Panayiotou voted in favour, while Loucas Fourlas and Michalis Hadjipantela, both of Disy voted against, and both Akel’s Giorgos Georgiou and Diko’s Costas Mavrides did not vote.

The second motion was put forward by MEPs from The Left, the European grouping of which Akel is a member, and as such, Georgiou was one of its sponsors.

He voted in its favour and was joined by Fidias Panayiotou in doing so, but Geadi, who had voted in favour of the first motion, chose to abstain from the second vote.

As with the first vote, Fourlas and Hadjipantela voted against the motion and Mavrides did not vote.

The second motion fared worse than the first overall, with only 133 MEPs voting in its favour and 383 voting against.

Three months prior, in July, the Cypriot MEPs were also evenly split, with Geadi and Panayiotou voting in favour, Fourlas and Hadjipantela voting against, and Mavrides and Georgiou not voting.  That motion won 175 votes, while 360 MEPs voted against it.

A no-confidence vote in the European Commission would require a two-thirds majority – 480 votes – to pass. If it passes, von der Leyen and all 26 other commissioners, including Cyprus’ Costas Kadis, will be required to resign.