{"id":36360,"date":"2026-04-21T17:17:05","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T17:17:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/36360\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T17:17:05","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T17:17:05","slug":"roberta-metsola-cements-rise-to-european-parliament-presidency-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/36360\/","title":{"rendered":"Roberta Metsola cements rise to European Parliament presidency \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In 2016, amid a migrant surge from Syria, Metsola drafted a report <a href=\"https:\/\/www.europarl.europa.eu\/doceo\/document\/A-8-2016-0066_EN.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">calling<\/a> for the EU to take a \u201cholistic approach\u201d 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.\u00a0A new pact on migration and asylum is now under examination. <\/p>\n<p>Still, Juan Fernando L\u00f3pez Aguilar, a Spanish Socialist MEP who chairs the LIBE committee, argues Metsola deserves credit.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI can recall that resolution and that so-called \u2018holistic\u2019 approach because it has become some kind of mantra whenever we insist on the need for a comprehensive and global approach to migration policies,\u201d he said. \u201cRoberta is eloquent, experienced and she\u2019s got all the assets for the job.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Later, Metsola helped oversee Parliament\u2019s work to both expand Frontex, the EU\u2019s border agency, and then investigate the agency when it was accused of illegally turning away migrants at the bloc\u2019s border.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have always had a very good working relationship with her,\u201d said Daniel Freund, a German Green MEP who co-chairs the working group probing Frontex.<\/p>\n<p>The other Malta connection<\/p>\n<p>Back in Malta, Metsola has also earned recognition for her outspoken criticism of the socialist government in the wake of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia\u2019s death in 2017. Caruana Galizia was killed by a car bomb as she was investigating rampant corruption that reached the highest echelons of Malta\u2019s government.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2016, amid a migrant surge from Syria, Metsola drafted a report calling for the EU to take&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36361,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[139],"tags":[7147,2034,23967,8055,3928,23968,5255,489,7794,10859,1065,3930,16894,23969,23970,23971,5019,316,23972,23973,23974,7546,8789,1430,1431,388,1086,23975,441,1433,2289,11622,238,23976],"class_list":{"0":"post-36360","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-roberta-metsola","8":"tag-asylum","9":"tag-borders","10":"tag-boyko-borissov","11":"tag-brussels-bubble","12":"tag-carbon","13":"tag-catherine-ashton","14":"tag-catholic","15":"tag-corruption","16":"tag-daniel-freund","17":"tag-david-sassoli","18":"tag-elections","19":"tag-emissions","20":"tag-equality","21":"tag-evelyn-regner","22":"tag-francois-xavier-bellamy","23":"tag-gender-equality","24":"tag-health-care","25":"tag-human-rights","26":"tag-joseph-muscat","27":"tag-karen-melchior","28":"tag-kosma-zlotowski","29":"tag-lgbtq","30":"tag-malta","31":"tag-meps","32":"tag-migration","33":"tag-parliament","34":"tag-rights","35":"tag-risk-and-compliance","36":"tag-roberta-metsola","37":"tag-rule-of-law","38":"tag-services","39":"tag-slovenia","40":"tag-syria","41":"tag-womens-health"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}