EU Parliament to inaugurate seventh legislature today

The five Maltese members of the European Parliament elected in last June's elections yesterday flew to Strasbourg to join another 731 MEPs from the other 26 EU member states for the constitutive session of the seventh legislature to take place between today and next Thursday.

The first session will be dominated by the election of the top parliamentary posts, including the President, 14 vice-presidents and five questors, and the composition of the 20 Parliamentary Committees which do the most important technical and political work.

Although with the smallest delegation, Malta starts this legislature with a number of positive and negative records.

On the positive side, Malta had the highest turnout in the June elections, while Nationalist MEP Simon Busuttil won the highest percentage of votes when compared to all the 736 elected MEPs. According to statistics published by the EP yesterday, Dr Busuttil obtained 27.72 per cent of the vote making him the most popular MEP in this legislature. He is followed by Estonian Indrek Tarand at 25.8 per cent.

With 80 per cent of its former MEPs re-elected, Malta is the country with the highest number of re-elected incumbents among the 27 member states.

Four of Malta's euro-deputies, Simon Busuttil and David Casa for the Nationalist Party and Louis Grech and John Attard Montalto for the Labour Party, were elected for the second time. Labour's Edward Scicluna is the only new Maltese among the five MEPs, taking up the seat formerly occupied by Glenn Bedingfield.

But the result also puts Malta at the bottom of the gender equality ranking with 100 per cent of its delegation being male. No other country has such a male-dominated line-up.

Finland has the most female-leaning delegation with 61.5 per cent of all its MEPs being women.

Before today's official first session, the seven political groups forming this legislature were horse-trading to share the EP's top jobs and assure the presence of their MEPs on the most influential parliamentary committees.

The two most important political groups, the European People's Party and the Socialists, who have changed their name to Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, agreed informally to share the EP Presidency.

Jerzy Buzek, a member of the EPP and a former Polish Prime Minister, got the job for the first half of the legislature and the current leader of the Socialists, German MEP Martin Schultz will be in the top seat from 2012 to mid-2014.

Dr Busuttil will be a member of the Civil Liberties and Petitions Committees and a substitute on the Internal Market Committee while David Casa will be following the Employment Committee as a member and will also be a substitute on the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee.

Labour's head of delegation Louis Grech said that he has still to wait for the final decision of his group to be able to confirm the committees assigned to the three Labour MEPs. Sources close to the Labour Party told The Times that the most important committees lobbied for by Labour were Foreign Affairs, Economic and Monetary Affairs and Internal Market.

As from today, the EP will also introduce a new statute consisting on a new financial package to all MEPs and a new set of rules aimed at increasing transparency.

The five Maltese MEPs will now receive a monthly salary of €7,665 taxed at EU rates and a financial package for travel, staff and office allowance of more than €300,000 a year each. In the last legislature a Maltese MEP received a salary of just €1,295 a month.