The European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, has been hit with legal action by an MEP for alleged defamation in comments she made at the European Parliament.
Romanian MEP Gheorghe Piperea, from the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), has filed a claim at the EU Court of Justice.
According to his statement, as reported by Brussels Signal, he is seeking moral damages and an official apology for what he alleges were defamatory and politically motivated accusations.
The issue stems back to the recent motion of no-confidence that von der Leyen faced, which Piperea led, in which he alleges she used her plenary speech to personally attack the initiators rather than address the accusations she faced.
The President survived a confidence vote tabled by Piperea, who gathered enough signatures in opposition to her secret texts with the chief executive of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer in 2021.
During the no-confidence debate in July, von der Leyen claimed that the signatories were “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s friends,” “extremists,” and propagators of “conspiracy theories.”
While Politico reported that Manfred Weber, president of von der Leyen’s centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), described the signatories to the motion as “puppets of Putin,” adding that “Putin will like what his friends are doing here.”
Piperea alleges that on 20 July, a European Commission spokesperson repeated and endorsed her claims, which he said directly tied his name to alleged Russian propaganda.
“Such claims are not only completely unfounded, but also damaging to my reputation and political activity as an elected representative of the European people,” Piperea stated in his press release.
Politico reported that the European Commission declined to comment.
This comes as Von der Leyen is set to face two confidence votes in October, the first launched by the far-right Patriots for Europe and the most recent launched by the Parliament’s Left group.