Roberta Metsola was elected as the President of the European Parliament on Tuesday, 18 January.
Maltese MEP Roberta Metsola was elected on Tuesday (18 January) to govern the EU institution for the next half of its five-year mandate after attaining a hard majority in the initial ballot. She is the 3rd women President to get elected after 20 years.
Metsola was appointed with 458 votes. Followed by Green party candidate Sweden’s Alice Kuhnke with 101 votes and leftist Sira Rego from Spain with 57 votes.
At the conclusive minute, conservative statesman Kosma Złotowski repealed his candidacy. After an agreement with distinct political groups on the assembly’s vice-Presidents and quaestors, which subsist further due, is to be elected during this week’s parliamentary session.
The centre-right European People’s Party, centrist Renew, and centre-left Socialists & Democrats endorsed an agreement among these three parties in European Parliament, which resulted in the election.
With an updated directory log of ten political priorities: values, climate, health, digital, economy, social affairs, security, migration, foreign affairs, and EU institutions, the treaty was attained at the beginning of the statute in 2019 and resuscitated for the midterm.
The Parliament quotations let out Metsola’s opinions on abortion. Reproductive rights took massive backlash on the backing of a significant minority of progressive lawmakers. Both Kuhnke and Rego received support beyond their political groups.
Nevertheless, the social-democrats maintained their end of the agreement; barely a tiny minority departed from the party chain in the classified ballot.
Metsola accomplishes Italy’s David Sassoli, who passed away the previous week because of some complications. Sassoli’s condition was precarious by leukaemia, which he was suffering from the day he took possession of the presidency. That was open to the public after his demise.
European Parliament President David Sassoli Demise
The president of the European Parliament, David Sassoli, died in the early hours of Tuesday (11 January) in hospital in Italy, his spokesperson announced on Twitter.
The Maltese politician said that her role would be about “always standing up for Europe, for our mutual values of democracy, dignity, justice, solidarity, equality, the rule of law, and fundamental rights. For the politics of hope and the vow of the European Union.”In her inaugural address, Metsola paid homage to Sassoli and his legacy.
Metsola also referred to the centrality of Parliament as the manifestation of the EU’s democratic virtues. She said that the fight against authoritarianism, discrimination, and climate change would be her prominent priority.
Considering the foreign policy, she spoke of the apprehensions over Ukrainian sovereignty. The stalemate in Cyprus and the EU’s alliance with the Western Balkan countries.
She devoted her ultimate messages to the family of Daphne Caruana Galizia. The Maltese journalist was massacred in 2017 for her investigation on political corruption. Of Olivia Dubois, a French journalist abducted in Mali last April.
Metsola is the third woman to gain a victory in the top’s EU Parliament position. This is after Simone Veil and Nicole Fontaine.
“It will not be another two decades until the next woman is standing here,” concluded Metsola.
Anti-abortion stance
Once in, she ascended steadily up the statuses of the EPP in parliament. Dealing with dossiers comprising immigration and emancipation of the media.
Metsola acknowledged the vice president’s duty in 2020 post an Irish lawmaker, Mairead McGuinness, who took off to become an EU commissioner. She gained additional importance in the previous year because of a string of high-profile events for Sassoli as he underwent bouts of pneumonia.
But her disagreement with abortion — which persists criminal in extensively Catholic Malta. Saw her candidacy for the leading job run into opposition by some lawmakers.
Metsola — who believes herself to be a pro-LGBTQ modern. Voted in June against a document that urges all EU member states to “ensure universal access to careful and legitimate abortion” for women, disagreeing it infringed Malta’s right to decide for itself.
One of the lawmakers portrayed Metsola’s opinions on abortion as her “weak spot”. It provoked the Greens and Left political groups to put forward staunchly pro-choice feminists as substitutes for parliament heads.
MEPs had been anticipated to elect Metsola as president despite her anti-abortion standpoint.
But Metsola has asserted she would lay her stance at a side and embody the majority opinion of the parliament as president.
“On sexual and reproductive health and rights, the role of the European Parliament is clear,” Metsola notified the newspaper Malta Today. She quoted,
“As president of the Parliament, my duty is to represent the view of the Parliament, and if I am elected, I will do my duty as I have always done.”
