A week following the death of David Sassoli, the European Parliament chooses a new president on Tuesday, or, in all likelihood, a new president. Maltese Roberta Metsola, from the EPP group (right, center-right, Christian Democrats), should become on her 43rd birthday the third woman to lead the assembly meeting in plenary in Strasbourg, following the mandates of the French women Simone Veil and Nicole Fontaine.
In the bargaining around the main European posts, following the elections of May 2019, it was decided to grant the presidency of Parliament to the S&Ds (socialists and social democrats, second group of the assembly) for the first half of the legislature and to the EPP for the second.
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The S&D, which had then proposed David Sassoli, MEP of the Italian Democratic Party (center-left), had questioned this agreement in recent weeks, but finally gave up proposing a candidate. The third major player is Renew.
Even if there was some resistance from the S&D and Renew (liberals, macronists), especially around Metsola’s anti-abortion position, the fact that these two groups are not presenting a candidate seems to indicate that they will respect the agreement made.
Four candidates
Four candidates have officially presented themselves to take over from him: Roberta Metsola, Sweden’s Alice Bah Kuhnke for the Greens/EFA group, Poland’s Kosma Zlotowski from the ECR group (conservatives), and Spain’s Sira Rego for the Left group .
A candidate must have a majority of the votes cast to win. The first round of voting begins at 9:30 a.m. If there is still no absolute majority in favor of a single candidate following three rounds of voting, the two most popular in terms of votes compete in a final round.
