EUROPE - Ursula von der Leyen faces a final desperate bid to convince the European Parliament to support her bid to become the next president of the European Commission and avert an "institutional crisis". The German defence minister spent the weekend holed-up in her temporary Brussels office working on a plan to win the backing of MEPs in a confirmatory vote on her presidency bid on Tuesday. Under the EU’s rules, Ms von der Leyen, 60, must secure at least 374 votes before she can be crowned as the first woman head of the European Commission. In a bid to seize control of the bloc’s policies for the next five years, MEPs have used the finely-balanced contest to extort political promises from the 60-year-old. Green and socialist MEPs have publicly signalled that they will not offer their support when the vote is held tomorrow evening. They have warned that the German’s programme, which she set out to political groups last week, lacks ambition.