In 2016, amid a migrant surge from Syria, Metsola drafted a report calling for the EU to take a “holistic approach” to the issue. In the five years since, however, the bloc has failed repeatedly to strike any sort of larger deal on processing and relocating migrants. A new pact on migration and asylum is now under examination.
Still, Juan Fernando López Aguilar, a Spanish Socialist MEP who chairs the LIBE committee, argues Metsola deserves credit.
“I can recall that resolution and that so-called ‘holistic’ approach because it has become some kind of mantra whenever we insist on the need for a comprehensive and global approach to migration policies,” he said. “Roberta is eloquent, experienced and she’s got all the assets for the job.”
Later, Metsola helped oversee Parliament’s work to both expand Frontex, the EU’s border agency, and then investigate the agency when it was accused of illegally turning away migrants at the bloc’s border.
“I have always had a very good working relationship with her,” said Daniel Freund, a German Green MEP who co-chairs the working group probing Frontex.
The other Malta connection
Back in Malta, Metsola has also earned recognition for her outspoken criticism of the socialist government in the wake of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia’s death in 2017. Caruana Galizia was killed by a car bomb as she was investigating rampant corruption that reached the highest echelons of Malta’s government.