BRUSSELS — A European lawmaker who led a failed no-confidence vote against Ursula von der Leyen is suing her for defamation because he says she implied he was taking orders from Russia.
Romanian MEP Gheorghe Piperea, of the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), said the European Commission president chose to “personally attack” him in her remarks during the no-confidence debate.
Piperea is seeking an official public apology for the Commission president’s comments, which he said included the claim that its signatories were “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s friends,” “extremists,” and propagators of “conspiracy theories.” A “significant number” of those signatories have joined the lawsuit, the MEP said.
The case was filed at the EU Court of Justice, which has yet to rule on whether it is admissible. While defamation cases are usually handled by national courts — as the CJEU only rules on EU law — Piperea is using an article of the treaty founding the EU as legal basis. The article states the EU needs to “make good any damage caused by its institutions or by its servants in the performance of their duties.”
The Commission declined to comment.
‘Puppets of Putin’
In July’s no-confidence debate in Strasbourg, von der Leyen said Piperea’s arguments were taken “right from the oldest playbook of extremists.”
“We see the alarming threat from extremist parties who want to polarize our societies with disinformation,” the Commission president said, adding there is “ample proof that many are supported by our enemies and by their puppet masters in Russia or elsewhere.”
Manfred Weber, president of von der Leyen’s center-right European People’s Party, described the signatories to the motion as “puppets of Putin,” adding that “Putin will like what his friends are doing here.” The chair of the Socialists and Democrats, Iratxe García, also referred to Piperea and the signatories of the motion as allies of Putin.
Piperea filed the motion of no confidence, which forced a debate and vote against von der Leyen, in mid-July after gathering enough signatures in opposition to her secret texts from 2021 with Albert Bourla, the chief executive of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer.
During the no-confidence debate in July, Piperea accused the “non-democratic” Commission of making the EU’s decision-making process “opaque and discretionary” and thereby raising “fears of abuse and corruption.”
The post Von der Leyen sued for defamation by MEPs who tried to bring down Commission appeared first on Politico.
