As the newly-elected European Parliament gathers in Strasbourg for its inaugural sitting on Tuesday, its first task will be to elect its president.

That vote is looking unlikely to be contentious, with current president Roberta Metsola set to cruise through to a second term unchallenged.

Although the Left has fielded a challenger candidate, Spain’s Irene Montero, her bid is merely symbolic and will not obstruct the incumbent’s path to re-election.

That’s because Metsola has managed to draw consensus from across the parliament’s fractious political divides at a time when ideological rifts seem deeper than ever in the parliament’s hemicycle. It means she’s tipped to comfortably secure the needed absolute majority of ballots cast.

A Conservative Christian-democrat belonging to the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), Metsola is credited with steering the parliament through one of the most tumultuous periods in its 70-year history – including the eruption of war on Europe’s doorstep and the most explosive corruption scandal to ever hit the institution.

Several parliamentary sources told Euronews that her performance over the past two years has seen her brush off initial qualms about her candidature, which were mainly centred around her anti-abortion views.

“At the beginning of her term, I was sceptical because of her stance against abortion rights. I was afraid we would have a very Conservative lady in the presidency,” a Green MEP re-elected to the chamber in June’s European election said.

“But she has proven to be a well-intentioned president, with an impressive attention to detail,” the MEP added.

“She has managed to make parliament more visible and stronger during her last mandate,” another MEP from the Green group added. “She is a great ambassador for the European Parliament in the world.”

“Metsola is the right person to lead this parliament,” a Socialist lawmaker said.

Ursula von der Leyen’s re-election as president of the EU’s powerful executive – to be decided in a vote on Thursday – is meanwhile looking much more shaky, prompting some to question whether Metsola herself would be a more palatable candidate for the role.

A spokesperson for the Left group conceded that despite fielding its own candidate, it was not whipping its members to vote against Metsola – as it will do in the case of von der Leyen – adding that some members could support Metsola because of her strong tenure.

A presidency of firsts

In 2022, Metsola became the youngest person to preside over the European Parliament at the age of 43, when she took over following former president David Sassoli’s death. She was also the first Maltese to take the parliament’s helm, and the first woman in two decades.

Since then, her time in office has been marked by many firsts. In April 2022, she became the first EU leader to visit Kyiv after Russia launched its illegal full-scale invasion of Ukraine. 

Other historic milestones during her time in office have been tougher to grapple with.

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In December 2022, she became the first president to participate in a police raid on a fellow lawmaker when she accompanied officers to the home of Socialist MEP Marc Tarabella as part of the so-called Qatargate corruption probe that has since become one of the most sordid stains on the parliament’s reputation.

In response to allegations Qatari, Moroccan and Mauritanian officials had paid elected lawmakers to influence EU legislation, Metsola said that the European Parliament had come “under attack.” “Enemies of democracy” had “weaponized” Members of the European Parliament, she said.

Metsola, who has made fighting corruption and upholding the rule of law a core tenet of her political career, has since vowed to futureproof her institution against corruption with a raft of reforms designed to ramp up transparency and ethics rules.

But for some lawmakers, the reforms steered by the president have simply not been sufficient.

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“We welcome that she has followed many of our calls in the wake of Qatargate, but there is still much to be done in the Parliament on transparency, accountability, and preventing undue influence. We hope to see further action from her in this mandate,” a spokesperson for the Green group said.

A bulwark against the far right

Lawmakers are also satisfied with the way Metsola has defended mainstream political forces against the surge of the far right, by sanctioning radical right-wing lawmakers prone to disrupting the parliament’s plenary session.

Ahead of June’s European elections, Metsola criss-crossed the continent in a bid to encourage voters to cast their ballots while promoting the achievements of the bloc, calling on voters to put their trust in pro-European parties in the centre-ground in a bid to fend off rising populist forces.

In contrast, her counterpart in the EU’s executive, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, was slated for her open overtures to the hard-right grouping of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in the run-up to July’s election.

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It sparked outrage among her traditional allies. While she has since rowed back on her suggestions she would integrate parts of the hard-right European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) in a future coalition, left-leaning lawmakers are still nervous her EPP party could be lured to rely on right-wing votes to push through legislation in the upcoming term.

“Von der Leyen has promised there will be no structured alliances with the ECR and the far-right, but it’s for me still not 100% clear what this means,” an MEP for the Greens group said, adding that Metsola’s conduct rejecting far-right populists has been more clear-cut.

Breaking the glass ceiling

A source close to Metsola from the EPP described her as one of many “powerful women” that have led Europe in recent decades, alongside Angela Merkel and Ursula von der Leyen.

Metsola has always tirelessly encouraged women and girls to break the glass ceiling in politics, and has championed equal rights across sectors.

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But despite her steadfast support for women’s rights, she also has a track record of voting against abortion rights.

Several left-leaning and centrist lawmakers cited these ideologies as the only drawback in her re-election bid. But since assuming the presidency of the European Parliament, she has vowed to respect the hemicycle’s majority opinion on abortion, putting her own personal stance to one side.

Even for lawmakers that have constantly fought for abortion rights – including with a resolution in April calling to include the right in the EU Fundamental Rights Charter – Metsola has done enough to assure that she will not assert her own views on abortion as part of her role as president.