The Maltese Roberta Metsola at the head of the European Parliament?
Audio 03:31
Maltese MEP Roberta Metsola, December 4, 2019 in Valletta.
AFP - ANDREAS SOLARO
By: Anastasia Becchio
4 mins
The European Parliament is due to elect on Tuesday January 18 the successor to its late president, David Sassoli, who succumbed to an illness earlier this week and whose mandate expired this month.
Four candidates are in the running, but Maltese Roberta Metsola, a member of the EPP, is the favourite.
If she enjoys a good reputation in the European Parliament, where she has sat since 2013, her anti-abortion positions are controversial.
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A mother with a large family in the kitchen, surrounded by her husband and her four turbulent boys: between two work sessions at the European Parliament,
Roberta Metsola
cooks a bolognese, in the first minutes of a documentary published on her official site. Passing without transition from English to Maltese, Roberta Metsola displays the image of a dynamic young forty-year-old, seduced by the European idea from an early age.
She obtained her law degree from the University of Malta in 2003, the year the island decided to join the European Union.
She then studied at the College of Europe in Bruges and in 2004 ran for a first term as an MEP, without success.
She will do it twice before entering the hemicycle to replace Simon Busuttil, elected to the Maltese Parliament in 2013. She was elected the following year.
While waiting for her time, Roberta Metsola is responsible for justice and home affairs in the permanent representation of Malta to the European Union, then legal adviser to the European External Action Service from 2012 to 2013.
►
To read also
:
EU: death of the President of the European Parliament, the Italian David Sassoli
“
Even though she comes from a small member state, she knows all the details of European politics and the national policies of the 27 states,”
says Andreas Schwab, MEP for the European People's Party. The German elected official salutes
the "remarkable intelligence
" shown by his "
excellent colleague
", who has worked in several committees of the European Parliament, including the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs and the Special Committee on organized crime, corruption and money laundering. “
She is a woman, a mother, who has demonstrated to all colleagues in the EPP and even beyond that she will be capable of being the president of all colleagues in the European Parliament
“says Andreas Schwab.
Leader of the Maltese Nationalist Party in the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola was elected vice-president of the hemicycle in 2020, replaced David Sassoli, when he was ill and is now acting since his death on 11 January.
A progressive opposed to abortion
Committed to the rights of LGBT + people, in the fight against corruption and clientelism in Malta, defender of the right of asylum and the rule of law, Roberta Metsola could be considered very progressive within her party. But his anti-abortion positions are controversial. The Vice-President of the European Parliament systematically votes against all the resolutions which defend the right to abortion and she even abstained from voting a text which asked the European Commission to criminalize violence against women.
Aurore Lalucq, MEP from the Socialists and Democrats group, is worried about the “
bad signal
” that Parliament could give by electing a personality opposed to abortion as its head. “
The message sent is not good. In my gut, I can't put a ballot for someone who can vote, for example, against a resolution to defend women in Poland following the virtual ban on the right to abortion there
", underlines the elected Frenchwoman, who recognizes, moreover, “
many qualities
” in Roberta Metsola: “
She is very pleasant, she can have strong positions on other subjects. He is someone who knows how to dialogue, respect and listen to the words of others, which is very important at European level, where we are constantly in compromise
”.
Malta is one of the last countries in the European Union where abortion remains completely illegal – even in cases of rape, incest, fetal illness or danger to the mother. “
Roberta Metsola is an intelligent woman, open to the world, who knows the various traditions of the European Member States, but who also knows her constituency in Malta. She must take into account, in her voting behavior, the expectations of her voters
", argues Andreas Schwab, who says he is convinced that she will do what is necessary "
as President-elect of the European Parliament, to represent all the positions that the European Parliament
”.
An argument that does not convince Aurore Lalucq: “
Obviously Roberta Metsola will respect the word of the European Parliament when it does not go in her direction.
There are no topics on this.
Nevertheless, in politics, symbols are important
”.
In the absence of a candidacy presented by the two other major parties in the European Parliament, the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, and Renew, Roberta Metsola has a good chance of being elected.
She would then become the third woman to chair the European hemicycle, after Simone Veil and Nicole Fontaine.
►
To read also
:
European Parliament: the conservative Roberta Metsola well placed to take the presidency
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