NEW EP PRESIDENT: ANTONIO TAJANI

Antonio Tajani, of the EPP Christian Democrat group, has been elected president of the European Parliament fro the next two and half years. Pivotal to Mr. Tajani’s victory was a decision by Guy Verhofstadt, a former Belgian prime minister and the leader of the Parliament’s centrist Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe group, to withdraw from the race and form a coalition with Mr. Tajani’s center-right group.

In 1994 Tajani was elected MEP, later confirmed in 1999 and 2004. He was chairman of the delegation of Forza Italia to the European Parliament from June 1999 until May 2008. At the 2004 European elections he was elected from a list of Forza Italia in the Central college, receiving 122.000 preferences. He was admitted to the European People’s Party. Tajani was a Member of the European Parliament for Central Italy with the Forza Italia party from 2004 to 2008 and sat on the European Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs. He was a substitute for the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs and a member of the Delegation for relations with Israel. He was a member of the European Convention, which drafted the text of the European Constitution that never entered into force. On 8 May 2008, he was appointed as Italy's EU Commissioner by newly elected Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, replacing Franco Frattini, new Italian foreign minister. Tajani received the Commission for Transport portfolio. In 2009 he was reappointed as a member of Italian nationality of the second Barroso Commission as European Commisioner for Industry and Entrepreneurship.

Antonio Tajani's election cements the centre-right’s dominance of top EU jobs. The European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, and the European council leader, Donald Tusk, are drawn from the EPP. 

Challenges Ahead

1. The hottest issue in European Union affairs is how tough to be over Britain’s exit, and the Parliament has a veto on any deal London reaches with the rest of the bloc. Mr. Tajani has pledged to take a fair-minded approach: “We’ll need to be very balanced here — we’ll need to defend the rights of Europe, but I think that in the future the U.K. will be an important partner of ours,” he said.
2. Mr. Tajani must also balance demands among liberal and center-right lawmakers for greater openness and free trade with demands from factions of the center-left and fringe parties to take a more protectionist approach. That will be tested when the Parliament votes in mid-February on whether to approve the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between the European Union and Canada.
3. Mr. Tajani will also need to oversee passage of highly contentious legislation that could oblige European Union member states to share the burden of hosting asylum seekers under emergency conditions.