Roberta Metsola, who is the new president of the European Parliament

Roberta Metsola, the new president of the European Parliament, is a Maltese lawyer of the Partit Nazzjonalista, married to a Finn, Ukko Metsola. Born on January 18, 1979 (today is her birthday), she studied at the University of Malta and then attended the College of Europe in Bruges, Flanders, the cradle of the community elite. As a student, when her name was Roberta Tedesco Triccas, she was active in associations, becoming general secretary of the organization of European democratic students, in 2002-2003. Via social explains that she spent “years” “actively campaigning” for Malta’s accession to the EU, which arrived in 2004. The Maltese press reports that she and Ukko met when they were students and that one of the first appointments was a demonstration in Helsinki, against the Belarusian regime of Aleksandr Lukashenko. The couple has four children; he is now vice president of the US group of cruises Royal Caribbean Group. Specializing in European law, Roberta Metsola worked for the Permanent Representation of Malta in Brussels from 2004 to 2012, first as attaché for legal cooperation and then as head of the Justice and Home Affairs unit. In 2009 she is a candidate for the European Championships in Malta, like her husband, who runs in Finland with Kokoomus, a National Coalition Party, a member of the EPP: the Metsola were the first couple to compete in the European Championships in two different countries. In 2009, however, neither of them succeeded in the enterprise: on the basis of a partnership agreement, Ukko left politics forever.She then joined, as legal advisor, in the team of the then EU High Representative for Affairs Foreign Catherine Ashton; she left the role in 2013, when she managed to get herself elected MEP, occupying the seat vacated by the Maltese nationalist politician Simon Busuttil. She was one of the first Maltese women to become an MEP, being re-elected in 2014. She has been the first Vice-President of Parliament for two and a half years for the European People’s Party. For Malta, the smallest state in the EU, having a citizen at the top of the Chamber for the first time is a historic success. Its malice tends to make it popular with Italians, also because the Partit Nazzjonalista is traditionally more pro-Italian (and pro-EU) than Labor, pro-British, but it has attracted strong criticism, especially from the French of Renew, for its anti-abortion positions. expressed several times in Parliament. Maltese MEPs, not only nationalists but also Labor ones, traditionally tend to abstain or oppose resolutions that even remotely hint at abortion: the Malta Today newspaper recalls that the Labor delegation voted in 2015 in favor of the Tarabella report, which focused on promoting the role of women, but voting separately against all articles concerning voluntary termination of pregnancy. Malta is the only EU country to prohibit abortion, with one of the strictest laws in the world: it is also prohibited in cases of incest and rape and prison terms are foreseen, even if it is rarely prosecuted. Maltese women, according to the Times of Malta, go to have abortions abroad, mainly in the UK and Italy. However, Metsola told Malta Today that “as President of the Parliament, my duty is to represent the opinion of the Parliament and, if I am elected, I will do my duty as I always have”.