The European Parliament has re-elected Maltese conservative Roberta Metsola as president of the institution for the first half of the legislative period, that is, until the beginning of 2027. The politician, from the least populous country in the EU, has obtained 562 votes of support, out of 699 cast. As was the case in 2022, the Left group presented an alternative. And this time too it was a Spanish MEP. Then it was the current Minister of Children, Sira Rego, and this Tuesday it was the former Minister of Equality Irene Montero, who obtained 61 votes; 15 more than her group has. The European People’s Party (EPP), Metsola’s political family, has manoeuvred to try to monopolise the entire five-year legislative period, instead of just half, as it had agreed with the Social Democrats, according to several parliamentary sources.
The presidency of the European Parliament is the first of the major EU posts to be approved for the legislative period. On Thursday, the 720 MEPs will vote on whether to re-elect conservative Ursula von der Leyen as president of the European Commission. The German needs 361 votes to repeat as head of the EU executive.
“They will look to us to be leaders, [defendamos] our values, the rule of law, humanity in the Middle East, [rechacemos] “We must hold fast to our commitments, as a firm pillar of society and leave no one behind,” stressed Metsola in her speech before the vote. The Maltese, who has become the second person to be re-elected to this post, will lead the European Parliament during the first half of the tenth legislature, in a turbulent period, with a very fragmented and right-leaning hemicycle, and where it will not be easy to achieve balance.
“This must be a strong Parliament, in a strong Union. That is what the treaties want us to be and that is what people need us to be. We cannot accept that our role as parliamentarians is diluted,” the politician said, in what was clearly an internal message addressed to the parliamentarians present. Metsola, who in 2022 became the first woman in two decades to head the European legislature, has also warned against political and social polarisation and against political violence. The conservative is also one of the great defenders of the European Parliament having the power to propose legislation, a competence that now only the European Commission has, and that would give much more power to the institution she heads.
Irene Montero, for her part, cried out in her speech against what she called “the consensus of war”. “A great consensus of war is being imposed on the peoples of Europe, just as 15 years ago a great coalition of austerity was imposed on us, from whose consequences we have not yet recovered,” said the Spanish MEP, amid some light booing from right-wing sectors.
Montero, who was elected as a Podemos MEP, had no chance of being elected president, given the large coalition of the Popular Party, Socialists and Liberals that usually operates in the European Parliament. Moreover, on this occasion, the ultra-conservatives of ECR – the political family of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni – had also announced that they would support Metsola. However, the Left group, which has 46 parliamentarians, chose to present an alternative.
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To be elected president, Metsola needed half plus one of the valid votes cast on Tuesday. Two of the parliamentarians were unable to take office in this constitutive session. One of them is the elected Catalan MEP Toni Comín, who did not go to Madrid, to the Central Electoral Board, to swear the oath of allegiance to the Constitution and obtain parliamentary credentials.
Metsola’s result, 562 votes (90% of the Chamber), shows that support for the Maltese has been very transversal. This figure is the highest in history and shows that she has achieved practically unanimous support in her ranks, the socialists, the liberals, the greens and, probably, the ultra-conservatives of ECR. But even adding all the parliamentarians of these groups does not reach the sum she has achieved, so it can be deduced – the vote is secret – that she has also won support among the extreme right of Patriots for Europe (PfE) and among non-attached parliamentarians.
Power movements
The Metsola vote was basically a walk in the park, but in recent weeks the moves by the European People’s Party to try to monopolise the whole legislature for the Maltese leader, instead of just half, have caused great unrest among the Social Democrats, say sources from this delegation. The conservatives already tried to take over half of the mandate of the European Council, which will be held by the Portuguese socialist António Costa, thus eliminating the possibility of his re-election after two and a half years. This bluff in the midst of negotiations at the top of the EU was on the verge of derailing the agreements. The Popular Party wanted to show that theirs is the largest group and the winner of the European elections on 9 June.
Unlike what happened two and a half years ago, Metsola has this time avoided the controversy surrounding her position on abortion. Her contrary position, which was the majority in Malta, was then one of the arguments for rejection used by her critics. However, in this time the popular has won over a good part of the hemicycle and has become one of the most prominent names in the European conservative family. Metsola was, for example, the first senior official of the European Union to travel to Kiev after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. She did so just five weeks after the war began, on March 31, 2022, in what was, at the same time, a coup and the starting shot of a series of visits to the Ukrainian capital by almost all European leaders.
In this tenth legislative period, more than half of MEPs (54%) are beginning their mandate for the first time, according to statistics released by the European Parliament on Tuesday. In terms of gender, the hemicycle is far from parity, with 39% women, a slight decline compared to the previous legislature (when they reached almost 40%). The average age of MEPs is 50 years, with a range that goes from 77 years for the oldest to 23 for the youngest.
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