The smallest member country has had the youngest president in the history of the EU Parliament since Tuesday. Roberta Metsola succeeds the late Italian David Sassoli. Not everyone is happy with the “Progressive Conservatives” election.
Roberta Metsola succeeds David Sassoli as President of the European Parliament.
Roberta Metsola does not make it easy for her critics: the Maltese Christian Democrat is a staunch opponent of abortion, but she also stands up for the rights of gays, lesbians and transsexuals. She takes a hard line against illegal migration, but also calls for more legal channels for immigrants.
Green and left-wing MEPs in the European Parliament could not stand these contradictions. They each put up their own candidates for the office of the new EU Parliament President. However, Sweden’s Green Alice Bah Kuhnke and Spanish leftist Sira Rego didn’t stand a chance.
The EU is becoming more feminine
Because weeks ago, the largest factions in the EU Parliament – the Christian Democrats, the Social Democrats and the Liberals – had agreed on the 43-year-old Metsola. Driven by Manfred Weber, the Bavarian parliamentary group leader of the European People’s Party, the candidacy of the self-confident Maltese should restore balance in the EU’s political personnel carousel.
After all, social democrats and Christian democrats have been taking turns in the prestigious post of head of parliament for years. After the Social Democrat David Sassoli, who died unexpectedly last week as a result of a legionella infection, it should be a conservative’s turn.
The Liberals refrained from running their own candidacy. French President Emmanuel Macron, whose party sits in the liberal Renew Europe group in Strasbourg, signaled support for Metsola. That’s how it became “progressive conservatives” elected on Tuesday in the first ballot with 458 out of 616 votes as the new parliamentary speaker in Strasbourg.
Metsola is the third woman and the youngest person ever to hold the post. The first female president in Strasbourg, right after direct elections were introduced in 1979, was Frenchwoman Simone Veil, a Holocaust survivor. In 1999 she was succeeded by the French conservative Nicole Fontaine.
The top of the EU is becoming a bit more feminine. In addition to the head of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, only the office of EU Council President is occupied by a man, the Belgian Charles Michel. Metsola said Tuesday that she stood on the “shoulders of millions of nameless women who have endured so much and fought for us to have the opportunities they were never given.”
Connoisseur of the «Brussels bubble»
Great real political power is not associated with their office. As President, Metsola oversees all activities of the plenum, signs laws, accompanies the heads of the Commission and Council to important appointments and sometimes scolds the heads of state and government. However, the Christian Democrat promised to make the EU Parliament more visible to the public: she wanted to burst “the bubbles in Brussels and Strasbourg” and be accessible to people she wrote on her Twitter account.
Metsola is well acquainted with the “Brussels bubble”: The doctor of law worked for a long time in Malta’s EU representation and at the European External Action Service before she was elected to Parliament in 2013. As a young woman, she campaigned for her country to join the EU in 2004. Later she studied at the College of Europe in Bruges, a training ground for EU officials.
It is remarkable that with the Maltese, the smallest member country in the Union has a chance. However, the reputation of the Mediterranean island with its 500,000 inhabitants is not at its best. Blame the rampant corruption, the links between politics and crime, and the 2017 murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was investigating in this environment. Metsola had called for clarification in the case and, as a member of many EU delegations, had put pressure on Malta’s authorities. This eventually led to the resignation of then Prime Minister Joseph Muscat.
The Brussels correspondent Daniel Steinvorth Twitter Follow.