Much ado about censure

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In today’s edition:

- A censure storm in Strasbourg
- Tariffs latest
- Sánchez battles on
- Kaczyński’s latest tête-à-tête

War is still raging in Ukraine, 50% US tariffs are hanging over EU businesses and the EU has a China summit to prepare. But Ursula von der Leyen is being hauled to the podium in the European Parliament today to answer to a far-right MEP whose boss can't get over having lost the Romanian election.
You could get 72 MEPs to agree on just about anything. The ludicrously low bar that the Parliament sets to trigger a motion of censure against the entire European Commission –something that would be an unprecedented crisis for 27 countries – will be on full show in Strasbourg, when MEP Gheorghe Piperea stands up to tout his attempt to blow up Ursula von der Leyen and her team. Even he admits it will fail at the vote on Thursday, largely due to the high bar required for it to pass – two-thirds of the votes cast, representing a majority of all 720 MEPs.
Piperea’s motion – signed by a rag-tag bunch of Polish nationalists, extreme right MEPs, and homeless Putin sympathisers – focuses on the Pfizergate scandal. It also claims without evidence that the Commission interfered in elections in Romania and Germany, and complains about von der Leyen’s circumvention of MEPs on the joint defence loans, which Parliament is already dealing with elsewhere.
The timing is ironic. Most of the vitriol being levelled at von der Leyen these past weeks has come not from the far-right fringe but from her traditional centrist allies in Parliament who are enraged about her European People’s Party slide to the right.

Here’s our best bet on von der Leyen’s likely pitch when she speaks in the debate this afternoon in front of her "entire" team of commissioners: ‘You know me, I’m the person who invented the European Green Deal, I’m pro-climate, I stood up to Viktor Orbán before the Pride festival and I’m backing Ukraine to the hilt, and look at my team: it includes the commissioners you voted for last year. I want to work with you, not the far right.'
The centre-left MEPs who elected the Commission last year may be fed up with EPP chief Manfred Weber frequently ditching them to side with further-right groups on everything from bashing NGOs and anti-greenwashing legislation, to divvying up migration bills.
But their leverage is limited. The Socialists will not support the censure motion. Nor will Renew or the Greens. After all, it would be absurd to ally with the far right because they are annoyed about the EPP doing so.
The EPP isn’t exactly keeping calm, however. “A full EPP presence at this vote [on Thursday] is absolutely compulsory!” screamed an internal EPP group email seen by the Capitals.
The real threat to von der Leyen’s Commission – if there is one – is her ongoing negotiations on trade with the US. Messing up there will draw ire from member countries who truly hold the whip hand.

France is increasingly a lone voice calling for retaliation on tariffs, whether there is or isn’t a deal with the US.
French Finance Minister Eric Lombard raised the prospect of an imminent deal over the weekend – which has not transpired. "If not, Europe will undoubtedly have to respond more vigorously to restore the balance," he said, according to AFP. Emmanuel Macron himself has called for the EU to impose equal tariffs on the US, if any deal leaves the EU with a baseline tariff.
The Commission is increasingly looking at a deal that would maintain 10% tariffs on exports to the US in exchange for relief from sensitive sectors. Commission Spokesperson Olof Gill said talks on substance were taking place over the weekend, following progress on an “agreement in principle” (i.e. a bare-bones deal similar to the one that the US stuck with the UK.) “We are preparing for the possibility that no satisfactory agreement is reached,” he added.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said over the weekend that the US would now only apply the highest rate of tariffs to trade partners who fail to sign deals with Washington from 1 August. He told CNN that the EU and US sides were “making very good progress,” raising hopes that a deal can be struck to avoid a general tariff of up to 50%, as threatened by Donald Trump.

Spanish conservative opposition leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo on Sunday refused to rule out future alliances with the far-right Vox party, as he was re-elected for a second term at the Partido Popular’s national congress.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez was in full damage control mode. At the PSOE federal congress in Madrid, the Socialist leader was unanimously reaffirmed as party general secretary and received a standing ovation, a display of unity amid the party scandal.
Just hours before the event, Sánchez’s close ally Francisco Salazar resigned before even officially taking up his new post as deputy secretary, amid multiple allegations of sexual harassment and abuse of power.
Trying to turn the page, Sánchez appointed Rebeca Torró as the party’s new organisational secretary. But the shadow of corruption still looms: Torró’s two predecessors, Transport Minister José Luis Ábalos and senior official Santos Cerdán, are both entangled in the widening corruption probe roiling the Socialist ranks. Read the full recap here.

Irish Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe is in pole position to win another term as chair of the Eurogroup today. The centre-right politician is facing two challengers for the role steering the group of 20 EU countries who use the euro: Spain’s Carlos Cuerpo and Lithuania’s Rimantas Šadžius. More details here.

Under Germany’s initiative, ministers from France, Poland, Austria, Denmark, Czechia, and EU Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner are heading to a high-altitude huddle on migration at Zugspitze, in the Alps, on 18 July.
The goal is to hammer out a joint push for a tougher, faster, more coordinated migration policy across Europe, a spokesperson of Germany’s interior ministry told reporters on Friday.

FRANCE
To rein in public spending, the government is considering the possibility of a “standstill year”, Foreign Trade Minister Laurent Saint-Martin confirmed yesterday. The idea would be to carry over the State’s 2025 spending levels into 2026, without taking inflation into account. This measure could generate savings of €6 billion — still a long way off the €40 billion in cuts being considered by Prime Minister François Bayrou, who is due to present his initial budgetary guidelines on 15 July.
ITALY
Italy’s right-wing coalition showed rare public signs of division this weekend as Forza Italia clashed with its allies over a proposal to expand access to citizenship for children of immigrants. Read more.
SPAIN
The Spanish opposition People's Party (PP) would not apply a ‘cordon sanitaire’ to the far-right Vox party, PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo said on Sunday. Read more.
POLAND
The influential leader of Polish opposition party, PiS (ECR), Jarosław Kaczyński, says he met parliamentary speaker Szymon Hołownia from Poland 2050 (Renew) last week to discuss how to “save” Poland from illegal migrants. Read more.
SLOVENIA
Slovenia’s liberal Prime Minister Robert Golob said on Friday that he intends to call a consultative referendum on the country’s NATO membership, following a surprise defeat in parliament over a related measure on defence spending. Read more.

Tomio Okamura, the Tokyo-born leader of Czechia’s far-right Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) party, is making a political comeback before the October general election – and bringing the idea of a Czech EU exit back with him.

The EU’s push to boost military expenditure could undermine the bloc’s financial stability unless EU countries curb soaring deficit and debt levels, Denmark’s economy minister told Euractiv.

European Parliament plenary session in Strasbourg; debate on the motion of censure against European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen; commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide
Eurogroup ministers meet in Brussels
Informal meeting of Employment ministers in Aalborg, Denmark
Environment Commissioner Jessika Roswall presents roadmap for nature credits and attends a hearing before the European Parliament Environment Committee
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen meets the leaders of the EPP, S&D and Renew parliamentary groups together; and attends debate on the motion of censure
Meeting of the Bureau of the European Parliament

Contributors: Alexandra Brzozowski, Nick Alipour, Inés Fernández-Pontes, Magnus Lund Nielsen, Aleksandra Krzysztoszek, Fernando Heller, Alessia Peretti
Editors: Vince Chadwick and Sofia Mandilara.