[ad_1]
ROBERTA METZOLA PHOTO: European Parliament
Roberta Mezzola is the mother of 4 children, she and her husband fought in the 2004 European elections.
SUBWAYAn Altian lawyer, mother of many children and an active MEP, shocked the European bureaucracy by tableting 36 amendments to a simple, non-binding resolution. In our country we are talking about this only because the resolution deals precisely with the rule of law in Bulgaria. For more than a day, social networks were full of comments about Roberta Mezzola.
How did you get here?
Since Monday, the rule of law and protests in Bulgaria have been the center of attention in Brussels. It all started at the end of the summer with several debates in the EP’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) and will end with a resolution to be voted on on Thursday. The head of LIBE drew up the main text of the resolution and MEPs were able to table their amendments. They usually have one, two or at most three corrections.
The activity of one almost
completely unknown in Bulgaria
Maltese MEP
caused a general surprise
Already in Monday’s debate, Mezzola said that the resolution should “be rethought and rewritten,” but no one expected that, on behalf of the EPP, it would propose 36 amendments, most of which aim to soften the tone of criticism. for the Bulgarian resolution.
Who is Roberta Mezzola and why did she suddenly worry about the situation in our country?
Roberta Mezzola, 41, was elected MEP for the first time in 2013, becoming one of the first Maltese women to become a member of the European Parliament. A lawyer by training, she specializes in European law and politics.
She worked in the Permanent Representation of Malta to the EU from 2004 to 2012 as Attaché for Legal and Judicial Cooperation and as Head of the Department of Justice and Home Affairs. She then joined the team of the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Catherine Ashton. Mezzola leaves office to fill the vacant seat in the EP of the current leader of the opposition in Malta, Simon Busutil, and becomes MEP of the EPP group.
Roberta is the EPP group coordinator at LIBE. During the discussions on Bulgaria in the committee, he did not participate in the speech and did not participate in the vote on the draft resolution on Bulgaria. Mezzola is also a member of the Counter-Terrorism Committee and of the EP delegation for relations with the United States. She is also a deputy member of the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection and vice-president of the Committee on Petitions. He was also a member of the Special Investigation Commission of the Panama Papers before his term ended.
During her student years, Roberta Mezzola was very active in various organizations, serving as General Secretary of the Organization of European Democratic Students between 2002-2003.
The Maltese, born in 1979, is the mother of four children.
She is getting married her husband Uko,
also political, but from Finland,
in 2005. They moved to Brussels to campaign for the elections to the European Parliament. This is the first time in history that both members of a young family are candidates for the vote. At that time, Roberta Mezzola was already the mother of two of her children: Luca, almost 2 years old, and Alex, 7 months old. In his homeland, Mezzola is a member of the center-right Nationalist Party.
In August of this year Mezzola was named by the VoteWatch platform for the second political and social edition
most influential MEP
democracy issues
and the interior
It also actively addressed the issue of the rule of law in Bulgaria with its 36 amendments. After criticizing one of the changes, Mezzola withdrew it immediately, leading to speculation that she was not the author of the submitted texts. Since the beginning of his current term (2019), Mezzola has voted more frequently in the EP in line with the position of the EPP. However, more than once he did not comply and voted differently despite the guidelines of the political group. On the other hand, despite all his parliamentary activity, published on the EP website, Mezzola has never addressed the issue of Bulgaria, although he is a member of the LIBE committee.
[ad_2]
