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.