Roberta Metsola has the best chance of making history. She is running for the office of President of the European Parliament for the Christian Democrats and can count on success this Tuesday, her 43rd birthday. After 2002, there would finally be a woman at the head of Parliament again, and Metsola would also be the youngest incumbent to date. The fact that for the first time someone from the island nation of Malta, with its 500,000 inhabitants, gets a top job is significant for the EU: Metsola’s election would signal that one is not from big countries like Germany and Italy like their predecessors Martin Schulz, Antonio Tajani and David Sassoli must come to make a career in Brussels.
Metsola knows the area very well. Because before she was elected to the European Parliament in 2013, the doctor of law worked in the EU representation of her home country and for the European Foreign Service. As an activist, she campaigned for Malta to join the EU in 2004 while at university. She later went to the College of Europe in Bruges, a training ground for future residents of the Brussels bubble. The mother of four, who is married to a Finn, speaks fluent Italian in addition to English and French – which is extremely helpful for finding compromises and forging networks.
Metsola has shown talent in both disciplines: in 2017 she collected enough votes to win the CSU politician Monika Hohlmeier as domestic spokeswoman for the EPP Group. Taking on the Germans, who dominate the European People’s Party, is risky, but the maneuver did not harm Metsola’s career in the long term. Since November 2020, she has been the first deputy to Parliament President David Sassoli, who died in early January, and secured the support of faction leader Manfred Weber (CSU) after he decided against seeking to succeed Sassoli.
She is also suspect to many MPs because of the abortion issue
The fact that the Christian Democrats would appoint the parliamentary president in the second half of the legislature was decided in July 2019 in a tussle between the party families, which is typical for Brussels. The Social Democrats were allowed to nominate one of their own in the person of Sassoli and accepted the election of the CDU politician Ursula von der Leyen and the Liberal Charles Michel to the heads of the EU Commission and European Council. Because Metsola is also supported by French President Emmanuel Macron and his Liberals and Social Democrats are not nominating their own candidates, their election is considered safe.
It would be a surprise, however, if she achieves the necessary majority in the first ballot. The fact that Metsola is opposed to abortion makes her suspect not only for the Greens and the left, but also for many liberals and social democrats. At her meetings with the other parliamentary groups, she raised the issue of her own accord and affirmed that she would of course represent the position of the European Parliament after her election. In Malta, one of the most Catholic countries in the world, divorce has only been legal since 2011 and abortion is still banned.
In her application speeches, Metsola announced that she wanted to make the European Parliament more visible to the public. “I want us to burst the Brussels and Strasbourg bubbles and be accessible to the people,” she says in a clip on her Twitter account. This should give MPs more time to talk to citizens in their constituencies. In dealings with the 27 member states, she wants to confidently represent the positions of the MEPs. She thinks it is not enough if the President of the Parliament is only allowed to give a speech at EU summits and then has to leave the room.