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Malta MEP Roberta Metsola is the big favorite to become the first woman to preside over the European Parliament in 20 years on Tuesday. But his probable victory makes people cringe because of his positions against abortion.
The European Parliament elects its new president on Tuesday, January 18, a post which seems promised to the Maltese conservative Roberta Metsola, on the very day of her 43rd birthday. A member of the right-wing group of the European People’s Party (EPP), the leading political force in this institution, she is the favorite to succeed the Italian David Sassoli, who died on January 11 and whose mandate ended this week.
She will be opposed to three other candidates: the Spaniard Sira Rego (radical left), the Pole Kosma Zlotowski (ECR, eurosceptics) and the Swede Alice Bah Kuhnke (the Greens). Each of them will briefly defend their vision on Tuesday morning, before the vote.
Although the Social Democrats (S&D) are going to leave the field open to the EPP conservatives, due to a subtle game of checks and balances whereby the post of President is shared in turn with the EPP, the presentation of the Greens candidate is however likely to rally the voices of MEPs reluctant to support Roberta Metsola.
>> To see: Europe faced with the decline in the right to abortion
And this, because of his anti-abortion positions, a very widespread line in Malta, the last country in the EU where abortion remains completely illegal, which goes down badly with many MEPs.
“The Maltese MEP has never hidden her hostility to abortion, and despite a speech that wants to be feminist, Roberta Metsola voted, last September, against a text that aimed to criminalize violence against women, explains Alix Le Bourdon, correspondent for France 24 in Brussels. As a result, during her campaign, she wanted to reassure by affirming that the positions of the European Parliament would always come before her personal convictions”.
MEP since 2013 and Vice-President of Parliament since 2020, Roberta Metsola, mother of 4 children, recently gained visibility by acting as interim David Sassoli, removed from the hemicycle in the fall for health reasons.
“It is time for the European Parliament to be led by a woman,” she said recently, as she prepares to become the first woman to preside over the European Parliament in 20 years. The institution, which votes on bills and decides on the EU budget, has only twice been chaired by women since its members were first elected by direct universal suffrage in 1979, Frenchwoman Simone Veil and Nicole Fontaine.
42 years after Simone Veil
During her campaign, she called on MEPs to come out of their “bubbles” in Strasbourg and Brussels to listen to the concerns of citizens, while seeking to display a less controversial profile.
“The MEP, who is part of the less conservative wing of her party, displays rather progressive positions on other subjects such as the rights of the LGBTQ community or immigration, underlines Alix Le Bourdon. Nevertheless the symbol of her announced election is very strong more than 40 years after Simone Veil was brought to the head of the same institution”.
Recently contacted by France 24, the rebellious MEP Manon Aubry, had estimated that it would be “a disastrous signal 42 years after Simone Veil and while several Member States are attacking abortion and that thousands of Polish women have been marching in the streets for more than a year to defend the right to dispose of their bodies”.
Asked about the subject on December 9, when the French presidency of the European Union is due to begin, Emmanuel Macron indicated that “it is up to European parliamentarians to choose their president or their president. I hope that they will with the spirit of coherence and in fidelity with the combats which are theirs”.
However, Roberta Metsola is far from being as divisive as it seems. At the forefront of the fight against corruption, she called in December 2019 for the resignation of the Maltese Prime Minister, after the assassination of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. Moreover, Roberta Metsola enjoys a good reputation in Parliament.
“She is a worker who has relatively clear borders with the far right, which is not always the case in her political family”, recognizes Manon Aubry.
If successful, Roberta Metsola would also become the institution’s youngest president.
With AFP and Reuters
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