The new President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, is a feminist who stands up for the position of women, champions press freedom and LGBTI rights, fights against corruption. However, she has one stance that stands out: she is against abortion. Metsola comes from conservative and Catholic Malta, where abortion is absolutely taboo. Left-wing French MEP Leïla Chabi called Metsola’s candidacy “a disgrace, while women’s right to physical autonomy are under increasing attack across Europe.”
Legislation on abortion is not a European competence, but the European Parliament (EP) has repeatedly called for universal access to abortion. In such cases, Metsola voted against. Liberal French MEP Bernard Guetta therefore called Metsola’s candidacy ‘a very bad sign for women’s rights and the image of the EP’.
Despite this controversy, Metsola was elected EP President by a large majority on Tuesday. Already in the first round she got 458 votes, against 101 votes for Alice Bah Kuhnke from Sweden (Greens) and 57 for Sira Rego from Spain (Left). Right-wing candidate Kosma Zlotwoski, a member of Poland’s ruling PiS party, withdrew from the vote.
Political Jousting
Roberta Metsola succeeds social democrat David Sassoli, who died last week. Her candidacy was preceded by a political joust. In 2019 it was agreed that Sassoli would make way for a Christian Democrat in January 2022. The Social Democrats threatened to renege on this agreement, but in the end did not put up a counter-candidate. The chance of defeat was considered too great.
Metsola is only the third female president of the European Parliament, after Simone Veil (1979-1982) and Nicole Fontaine (1999-2001). She was born in Malta 43 years ago as Roberta Tedesco Triccas. At an international student festival in Malta, she met her husband, the Finn Ukko Metsola, now a top manager at a cruise line. With him she had four children.
Roberta Metsola is a product of the Brussels inner world. She studied at the College of Europe in Bruges, a training course for senior European officials. She then worked as a lawyer for Malta’s Permanent Representation to the EU and for then EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton.
Her political career got off to a shaky start. In 2004 she made a first unsuccessful attempt to be elected to the EP. In 2009, Metsola and her husband both ran, Roberta in Malta and Ukko in Finland. It was the first time that a couple ran a European campaign in two different countries. If one of them were elected, they agreed, the other would leave politics. In the end, neither of them were chosen. “I remember how we fell down with tears in our eyes. We had worked so hard and it didn’t work out,” she said afterwards.
Enter through the back door
In 2013, Metsola entered the EP through the back door, when a party member resigned his seat. She developed into a valued MEP. Metsola is a networker who speaks her languages, unlike her predecessor Sassoli, who, while considered very amiable, was handicapped by the fact that he spoke only Italian in a world where English is the main language.
The views of the convinced European Metsola are partly colored by her experiences in Malta. For example, she argued for the distribution of recognized asylum seekers across Europe, because the burden is now borne unilaterally by the countries bordering the Mediterranean.
She also turned against corruption. In 2017, Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was murdered. According to Metsola, the attack “illustrated the urgency of a situation where the ruling party is using its majority to waltz over the rule of law.” In 2019, she refused to shake hands with Maltese Labor Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, protesting corruption and crime in the country.
In Malta, Metsola is sometimes seen as a nest polluter. Critics accuse her of using corruption as a weapon against her Maltese opponents, while she is much more lenient with corrupt rulers linked to the Christian Democrats, such as the previous Bulgarian government of Boyko Bori
“It’s hard not to hate this sick woman,” director Mario Azzopardi tweeted. Her party lost in the 2019 European elections, but Metsola herself won more votes than ever. And now she has been elected the first Maltese to hold a high European position.