Greens/EFA Group candidate for the presidency of the European Parliament, British MEP Jean Lambert, believes that the sixth largest political grouping (with 50 MEPs) is just as well equipped as the larger groups to head up the institution.
“We can do at least as well as the others”, she told a small group of journalists on Tuesday 10 January. Among her group’s political priorities, she highlighted unconditional defence of human rights both inside and outside the European Union, maintaining the role of the EU – which is, she opined, being currently put in doubt – at the forefront of action to combat climate change, increased independence for Parliament so that it can better scrutinise the activities of the Commission and promotion of gender equality.
Lambert is the only British candidate in the race to be Parliament president. While a majority of UK citizens voted in June for their country to leave the EU, she said that, until the opposite is shown to be the case, she would work on the assumption that UK MEPs would continue to sit in Parliament until the end of their terms of office, in 2019. She said that her candidacy must not be seen as a way of minimising the outcome of the referendum. Once Brexit has taken place, Lambert, who has been an MEP since 1995, will look to continue her career in promoting human rights, in the world of academic research or think tanks.
On Tuesday, the environmentalist and regionalist MEPs held discussions with the candidates of the EPP and S&D Groups, Manfred Weber and Gianni Pittella respectively. Joint leader of the group, Ska Keller (Germany) said that her group did not support the “grand coalition” allowing the EPP and S&D to call the shots in Parliament. She argued that the election of a Christian Democrat to the presidency of Parliament would give the EPP its third high European post, since it already holds the presidencies of the European Council and the Commission. “Three EPP presidencies would raise eyebrows”, she noted. She praised the efforts of the outgoing president, German Social Democrat Martin Schulz, in giving the Parliament greater visibility, though she was critical of his methods which sometimes lacked transparency. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)