Cypriot member of the European Parliament and social media influencer Fidias Panayiotou announced he will vote against Ursula von der Leyen when the European Parliament decides whether to ratify her appointment as European Commission president on Thursday.
Late on Wednesday night, he published a video on social media platform X, titled “People don’t want von der Leyen”.
He explained that “I need to decide if I will vote for her to be re-elected for the most important position in the European Union, so I decided to ask the people of my country on all the social media platforms if they want me to vote for her or against her.”
He said a total of 50,000 people had voted on his Greek-language social media polls with clear results.
A total of 71 per cent of voters in the polls combined voted that they did not want Fidias to vote for von der Leyen, while polls on his English-language social media showed that from 200,000 participants, 82 per cent voted against von der Leyen.
“So, I am going to vote against her,” he declared.
The poll’s validity is questionable, with there being no real way of verifying users with multiple accounts, or even bots, have not voted. In addition, high-profile figures shared the polls to their own followers, swaying the polls in favour of their own opinions.
One such user was X owner Elon Musk, who retweeted the poll, writing “Fidias is right. Super important decision”.
Musk has 190 million followers and was just five days ago accused by the EU of breaching its online content rules, with X’s “verified” checkmarks “having the potential to deceive users”.
Von der Leyen was nominated by the European Union’s 27 member states’ heads of government, known as the European Council, in June, with the European parliament set to have its say on Thursday.
The European parliament vote requires a simple majority of 361 out of 720 MEPs in a secret ballot.
The vote looks set to go to the wire, with all 188 MEPs from the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), the group which nominated von der Leyen, set to vote in her favour.
However, other groups made clear that their support will be conditional on demands being met.
The centre-left Socialists & Democrats (S&D) group, which has 139 MEPs made clear their list of “key demands” last week, while centrist group Renew Europe, which has 102 MEPs, insisted von der Leyen must “respect the Green Deal”.
Renew Europe group leader Valerie Hayer made clear her view that von der Leyen must listen to her demands, saying “without our support, no stable pro-European majority is possible.”
With the numbers of votes on either side potentially set to be close, Fidias’ vote could be impactful on the result.
Should von der Leyen fail to win at least 361 votes, the European Council will have to reconvene and nominate a new European Commission president.
