Ursula von der Leyen wins second term as European Commission president

Ursula von der Leyen has been voted in for a second term as European Commission president, winning an emphatic victory as mainstream groups in the European parliament united to deny a win for anti-EU and extreme-right forces.

The Strasbourg chamber erupted in applause when it became clear that von der Leyen, the first woman to lead the EU executive, had cleared the hurdle by 41 votes – a stronger result than her first election in 2019.

The German Christian Democrat will now be at the head of the EU’s lawmaking and enforcement body until 2029.

Speaking on the floor of the Strasbourg chamber earlier on Thursday, von der Leyen appealed to “all the democratic forces in this house” to support her and announced a wide-ranging set of priorities for her second term.

“I will never let the extreme polarisation of our societies become accepted. I will never accept that demagogues and extremists destroy our European way of life,” she said, adding that she was ready to work with “all the democratic forces in this house”.

Far-right gains in recent elections coupled with the tumultuous international backdrop explain why von der Leyen was returned with a bigger vote than in 2019.

In the end, 401 MEPs voted in her favour, 284 against, 15 abstained and seven votes were void. She needed 360 votes to be re-elected.

The result will be a relief to EU leaders, who nominated her for a second term last month after European elections that shifted the parliament to the right.

Von der Leyen’s European People’s party (EPP), the Socialists and Democrats and the centrist Renew group announced they intended to support her, although some members had already said they would vote against.

The Greens, who voted against von der Leyen in 2019, said they would support her to keep the far right out of power.

“Is this a green programme that she has provided us?” Terry Reintke, a co-leader of the Greens, said on the chamber floor. “I can tell you no. For me what is crucial is that the majority that holds today is a majority of pro-European democratic groups in this house because we need to keep the far right from getting into power.”

The Eurosceptic European Conservatives and Reformists grouping, which includes Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party and Poland’s Law and Justice, was split. It said “a large majority” of its MEPs would vote against her but that it would be a free vote.

The EPP leader, Manfred Weber, who has cool relations with von der Leyen, urged his group to back her, telling them: “If you want to defend democracy, vote today for Ursula von der Leyen,” underscoring that many MEPs saw the vote as something bigger than the choice of a new EU leader.

In an appeal to her own centre-right EPP, von der Leyen promised a “burden reduction” of EU law to help small businesses, describing her first priority as competitiveness and prosperity.

Nodding to the Greens, liberals and Socialists, she vowed to stay the course on EU climate plans, promising in her first 100 days a new “clean industrial deal” to channel investment into decarbonising manufacturing and green tech.

Reflecting the French president Emmanuel Macron’s vision, she promised “a true union of defence” to develop common projects, suggesting a European air shield to protect shared airspace.

Under her programme, the EU will have for the first time a European commissioner in charge of housing, although the bloc has no policymaking power on the issue. Nonetheless, she promised a “European affordable housing plan” to address a crisis of high rents and unaffordable homes, a key priority for the Socialists.

Von der Leyen reaffirmed the EU’s support for Ukraine and issued her strongest criticism yet of the Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán’s recent trip to Moscow. “This so-called peace mission was nothing but an appeasement mission,” she told MEPs, generating the biggest applause of the 50-minute speech.

She promised to triple the number of European border police and coastguards to 30,000, attacking what she called Russia’s attempts to exploit the misery of Yemeni nationals by luring them to Europe and “pushing them deliberately at the Finnish border”.

She promised a commissioner for the Mediterranean region and called for improvements in returns of people denied asylum in the EU.

In one of the more emotional moments in her speech, she pledged EU action to tackle “the plague of cyberbullying”, saying that “my heart bleeds” when she hears of young people taking their own lives or self-harming triggered by social media.