The thousands of European farmers gathered in Strasbourg on Tuesday fired red cannonballs at “the Ursula dictatorship” that their slogans were tiring – in English. Contested, the President of the European Commission, reappointed for a second term following the 2024 elections, has just escaped a fourth motion of censure, largely rejected on Thursday by the European deputies… The French parliamentarians of the EPP, threatened with being disconnected from their party, voted against, preferring to be content with a victory obtained the day before: the referral to the Court of Justice of the European Union for the contested split of the agreement EU-Mercosur, which according to them sufficiently disavowed the Commission. The latter attempts to promote a provisional application of the treaty, without waiting for its ratification by Parliament, which would constitute “a form of democratic rape”scathed Maud Bregeon at the microphone of Sonia Mabrouk : the words of the spokesperson for the French government have burst the abscess of the growing unease around the functioning of the European Union.
Denial of democracy? Under the leadership of Ursula von der Leyen, the European executive took advantage of successive crises – Covid, climate, war in Ukraine, etc. – to advance its pawns to the edge of its powers: a dynamic that Raymond Aron called the “clandestine federalism”François-Xavier Bellamy has been warning for several years. Elected with the latter in 2024, Celine Imart observe this troubled game of the Commission and its president: “She talks about European defense, or capitulates to Trump last July without debate, without consulting Parliament, even though that does not fall within her remit…”
The President of the Commission only takes the power that we are willing to leave to her
If it is sometimes forced to soften its agenda under pressure, as with the ban on thermal cars, the Commission still uses its regulatory tools, such as the Digital Services Act, or its normative innovations, sometimes in support of private initiatives: Ursula von der Leyen announced this week at the Davos Forum that she was going to propose a unified European legal framework for companies, which would be added to the 27 existing national frameworks.
Accused by Sarah Knafo in particular of defending German industry and not European interests, the President of the Commission only takes the power that we are willing to leave to her, observe those familiar with European mysteries. Rather than denouncing a growing technocracy, we must rather observe the consent of large States to this empowerment of the Commission, observes a kingpin of the RN in the European Parliament, who suspects Emmanuel Macron of playing on two tables… The Head of State would have as a horizon the proposal formulated in a report by Guy Verhofstadt, former president of the liberal Renew group in the European Parliament: a super-presidency merging the head of the Council and that of the Commission. For sure ?
