Fidias holds online poll over whether to vote for von der Leyen

Cypriot member of the European parliament and social media influencer Fidias Panayiotou opened a poll on X, the social media platform better known as Twitter, asking his followers whether or not he should vote to approve Ursula von der Leyen as European Commission President for a second term.

He asked his followers, “do you want me to vote for Ursula von der Leyen to remain as president of the European Commission?” with a simple yes or no poll underneath.

Explaining his decision to publish the poll in a video posted to the same platform, he said “you guys will decide if you want me to vote for her or against her.”

This poll was then retweeted by the platform’s owner Elon Musk, who wrote, “Fidias is right. Super important decision”.

As of midday on Sunday, more than 100,000 accounts have voted in the poll, with just 15 per cent having voted in favour of von der Leyen, and the remaining 85 per cent having voted against.

However, there is no way of verifying on such a platform that users with multiple accounts, or even bots, have not voted.

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 which is to be held at 2pm Cyprus time on the day.

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 as their “spitzenkandidat” – the candidate they would nominate to be European Commission president were they to win the most seats – at this year’s European elections, set to vote in her favour.

However, other groups having 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” on Tuesday, 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 final 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.