According to the French "Echo" website reported on January 18, in Strasbourg that morning, the European Parliament MPs elected The Maltese conservative Roberta Metzola as the president of the European Parliament, thus becoming the third female speaker of the European Parliament after Simone Weiy (1979-1982) and Nicole Fontaine (1999-2002). As a candidate for the European People's Party caucus, she won the first round of voting, receiving 458 out of 705 votes.
As early as 2019, the post of President of the European Parliament was scheduled to be held in January 2022 by a member of the European People's Caucus. But with Olaf Scholz winning the German parliamentary elections in September 2021, the Social-Democrats group at one point considered abandoning the promise at the beginning of this parliamentary term. Conservatives have made it clear that they see this as a real declaration of war.
The speakership was supposed to belong to Bavarian Manfred Weber, who ran unsuccessfully for the presidency of the European Commission in 2019. Eventually Manfred Webber withdrew, and Roberta Metzola "stepped forward." Tuesday coincided with Roberta Metzola's 43rd birthday.
The new speaker of the European Parliament has spent almost his entire career in the EU. She worked for a long time at Malta's Permanent Representative for the European Union before joining the team of European Commissioner for Foreign Policy, Catherine Ashton.
After two failed candidacy attempts, she entered the European Parliament in 2013 and became first deputy speaker in 2020. In the fall of 2021, former Speaker David Sassoli fell ill and she acted as Speaker. David Sassoli died last week. (Editor/Lin Xiaoxuan)
Source: Reference News Network