24 Facts About Roberta Metsola

Roberta Metsola is a member of Malta's Nationalist Party and the European People's Party.

Roberta Metsola ran again for the 2009 European Parliament election in Malta for the PN, without being elected.

Roberta Metsola studied at St Joseph School in Sliema, St Aloysius' College sixth form, graduated in law from the University of Malta in 2003, and obtained a diploma in European studies from the College of Europe in Bruges in 2004.

Roberta Metsola has been awarded a from the University of Lisbon.

On 24 April 2013, Roberta Metsola successfully contested the casual election to fill the vacated seat of Simon Busuttil, becoming one of Malta's first female members of the European Parliament.

Roberta Metsola was the parliament's rapporteur on the European Border and Coastguard Regulation in 2019 and was co-rapporteur on an anti-SLAPP report in 2021.

Roberta Metsola was the parliament's rapporteur on the European Border and Coastguard Regulation in 2019, which legislated for 10,000 new borderguards for the European frontiers.

Roberta Metsola co-authored a non-binding report on the European migrant crisis in 2016, aimed at establishing a "binding and mandatory legislative approach" on resettlement and new EU-wide readmission agreements, which should take precedence over bilateral ones between EU and non-EU countries.

From 2016 until 2017, Roberta Metsola was part of the Parliament's Committee of Inquiry into Money Laundering, Tax Avoidance and Tax Evasion that investigated the Panama Papers revelations and tax avoidance schemes more broadly.

In 2019, during the controversies following the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia, Roberta Metsola famously refused to shake hands with Malta's then-prime minister Joseph Muscat at a meeting with the MEPs from Malta.

In October 2020, in the discussion in LIBE on a parliamentary resolution on "the rule of law and fundamental rights in Bulgaria", Roberta Metsola tabled amendments, on behalf of the EPP, which were widely interpreted as shielding Bulgaria's EPP government from criticism, including by proposing to remove references to Venice Commission findings and to the misuse of EU funds and high-level corruption allegations directly involving the then prime minister Boyko Borisov.

In November 2020, Roberta Metsola was elected as the First Vice-President of the European Parliament, replacing Mairead McGuinness, who had become European Commissioner.

Roberta Metsola was the first Maltese MEP to become a vice-president.

In June 2024, Roberta Metsola was elected for the third time as Member of the European Parliament, with a record number of 87,473 first preference votes.

In November 2021, Roberta Metsola was chosen as the EPP candidate to succeed David Sassoli as president of the European Parliament on the expiry of his term as president in January 2022.

On Sassoli's death, Roberta Metsola became the acting president of the European Parliament.

On 18 January 2022, on her 43rd birthday, Roberta Metsola was elected president of the European Parliament for a two-and-a-half-year term.

Roberta Metsola was elected in the first round of voting, receiving an absolute majority of 458 votes out of the 690 cast.

On her election, Roberta Metsola became the youngest ever president, the first Maltese person to hold the office, and the first woman president since 2002 and only third woman president ever.

On 21 May 2023, Roberta Metsola participated in the European Moldova National Assembly together with President of Moldova Maia Sandu.

Roberta Metsola gave rally participants a message during her speech:.

Roberta Metsola has called for strengthening the powers of the European Parliament.

Roberta Metsola met her Finnish husband, Ukko Roberta Metsola, at a youth event in 1999.

In September 2024, Politico Europe reported that, under a new ethics code for the European Parliament Roberta Metsola had advocated for, she would not have to declare her husband's role as the top European Union lobbyist for Royal Caribbean Group as a conflict of interest, unlike other MEPs.