Big favorite, the Maltese Conservative MEP Roberta Metsola was elected President of the European Parliament on Tuesday 18 January, gathering 458 of the votes of her peers in the first round of the ballot.
Member of the European People’s Party, the elected, who turns 43 today, thus succeeds the Italian socialist David Sassoli, who died a week ago at the age of 65, at the head of the assembly of 705 members. In the name of the alternation, the Social Democrats and the Liberals had called to vote for her, despite her contested positions on the voluntary termination of pregnancy (IVG).
David Sassoli should have left his post this week under a power-sharing agreement between his group, the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D), and the EPP, halfway through his five-year term.
MEP since 2013, the Maltese, known for her anti-abortion positions, notably called during her campaign on MEPs to get out of their ” bubbles “ Strasbourg and Brussels to listen to the concerns of European citizens.
A largely honorary function
The Parliament of Strasbourg, which votes on legislative proposals and decides on the Union’s budget, has only twice been chaired by women since the first election of its members by direct universal suffrage in 1979, the French women Simone Veil and Nicole Fontaine.
Three other candidates were in the running for this largely ceremonial post: the Swedish ecologist Alice Kuhnke (The Greens), the Spaniard Sira Rego (group of The Left) and the Pole Kosma Zlotowski (group of European Conservatives and Reformists). Neither the S&D group nor the centrist group Renew Europe – to which the La République en Marche party of French President Emmanuel Macron belongs – have presented a candidate.