President of European Parliament elected

18.01.2017
EU

After the fourth ballot yesterday evening, Antonio Tajani has won.

Results

Antonio Tajani (EPP, Italy) won the parliament’s presidential election with 351 votes in a final face-off with Gianni Pittella (S&D, Italy), who claimed 282 votes. The outcome of the fourth ballot was as follows:

Antonio Tajani (EPP, IT): 351

Gianni Pittella (S&D, IT): 282

Valid votes cast: 633

Abstentions: 80

Total votes cast: 713

Struggle

Tajani’s victory was foreseeable since the European People’s Party (EPP) and the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) had decided beforehand to form a coalition that would support EPP candidate Antonio Tajani.

Pittella expected to gain support from the European United Left – Nordic Green Left (GUE-NGL) as well as the Greens/EFA, but with no luck.

According to the rules of the procedure, in order to become president, a candidate must secure an absolute majority of MEPs’ votes.

Who is Antonio Tajani?

Antonio Tajani (born August 4th, 1953 in Rome) has been a professional journalist, editor of parliamentary affairs for the weekly Il Settimanale, presenter of Rai Radio 1 news program, and head of the Rome editorial office of the newspaper Il Giornale. He was a special envoy to Lebanon, the Soviet Union, and Somalia. Besides Italian, he speaks English, French, and Spanish.

In his youth, Tajani was a militant of Fronte Monarchico Giovanile (Youth Monarchist Front), a student organization of the Monarchist Party of Italy. Even later, he has always advocated for the return from exile of the House of Savoy (banned according to the Italian Constitution until 2002 when the Italian Parliament lifted the ban).

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