Ursula von der Leyen has won a second term as European Commission president, securing an emphatic victory in the European parliament as mainstream lawmakers united against 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 the head of the EU’s lawmaking and enforcement body until 2029.
“I can’t begin to express how grateful I am for the trust of all MEPs that voted for me,” she tweeted minutes after the results.
The victory cements von der Leyen’s status as one the most consequential commission presidents in the 67-year history of the European project. She has been feted for her unequivocal and early support for Ukraine, a pioneering response to the pandemic that led to the joint purchase of vaccines and the first-ever joint borrowing with the creation of the Covid recovery fund.
She has also been criticised, however, for relying heavily on a narrow coterie of advisers and avoiding scrutiny. On Wednesday the European court of justice found that her commission had failed to give the public “sufficiently wide access” to the purchase deals for Covid vaccines.
In an attempt to meet these concerns, on Thursday von der Leyen promised “more transparency, more accountability” and more frequent visits to the parliament.
Speaking on the floor of the Strasbourg chamber before the vote, she 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 accept that demagogues and extremists destroy our European way of life,” she said.
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 total, 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 shifted the parliament to the right.
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, congratulated von der Leyen, saying her re-election was “a clear sign of our ability to act in the European Union, especially in difficult times”. Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, said: “I’m sure you’ll do a great job. We will do, together.”
Von der Leyen’s European People’s party (EPP), the Socialists and Democrats and the centrist Renew group had announced they intended to support her, although some members had said they would vote against.
The Greens, who voted against von der Leyen in 2019, had said they would support her to keep the far right out of power.
“Is this a green programme that she has provided us? I can tell you no,” Terry Reintke, a co-leader of the Greens, said on the chamber floor before the vote. But, she added, it was crucial that a majority of pro-European democratic groups holds 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 planned a free vote but had said “a large majority” of its MEPs would oppose von der Leyen.
The EPP leader, Manfred Weber, who has cool relations with von der Leyen, had urged his group to back her, telling them: “If you want to defend democracy, vote today for Ursula von der Leyen.”
Against a backdrop of the war in Ukraine, widespread concern about foreign interference in European elections and the potential return of Donald Trump, his words appeared to underscore the view of many MEPs that the vote was something bigger than the choice of another commission president.
The shifting balance in the parliament was underlined when the French far-right leader Jordan Bardella was the third group leader to speak before the vote, reflecting the status of his Patriots group as the third largest force in the parliament behind the EPP and Socialists.
Soon afterwards an extreme nationalist Romanian MEP was removed from the chamber after heckling a liberal lawmaker, while a far-right Polish MEP who spoke for the newly formed extremist Europe of Sovereign Nations group attacked EU migration policy – and von der Leyen personally – in lurid terms.
Some insiders suggested the presence of these noisy voices on the far right could have helped tilt the balance in von der Leyen’s favour by underlining the stakes.
In an appeal to her own centre-right EPP, von der Leyen had 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 a commissioner in charge of housing for the first time, 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 her 50-minute speech.
