Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1475004
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 31 JULY 2022 OPINION 10 Raphael Vassallo OPINION When is Metsola going to start delivering on all those 'women's rights' promises? REASON I ask is that: it's been quite a while, you know, since the President of the European Parliament actually made some of them. Take the one about 'signing the Simone Veil Pact', for instance. That was a commitment that Roberta Metsola originally un- dertook – in the most public way imaginable, too (i.e., while joint- ly addressing a press conference, alongside French PM Emanuel Macron) – all the way back on January 19 of this year. As it happens, it was the very first day of her new role as EP President; which also makes it the first public statement she ev- er actually made, in that capac- ity. But that was more than six months ago, now: which might perhaps explain why Roberta Metsola herself seems to have conveniently forgotten all about it, in the meantime… Well, something tells me that she's now hoping the rest of us will likewise develop a sudden bout of 'temporary amnesia'… enough for it to just 'slip our minds', that – as all local news outlets had reported at the time (with varying degrees of sur- prise/shock/horror) – "Metsola pledges to sign pact guarantee- ing ABORTION [my emphasis] to women". Hmm. Funny how Roberta Metsola would expect us all to just 'forget' a little detail like that… when she herself had spent pretty much all her previ- ous career, as a Nationalist MEP, assiduously voting against every single EP resolution, that ever so much as dared mentioning those dreaded words: 'female repro- ductive rights'… But no matter. Because while her extraordinary U-turn may have discombobulated a fair chunk of her own (mostly pro- life) voter-base – and not with- out good reason: after all, the very first commitment of the Si- mone Veil Pact is: '1. Sexual and reproductive rights: Guarantee women's access to contraception and abortion…"– to this day, it still remains something that she only ever 'promised' to do. Not, mind you, that I've been keeping my eyes peeled, for any subsequent headline confirm- ing that Roberta Metsola HAS, in fact, signed that document at any point since January 19. But if there were any such headlines, I certainly didn't see them; and when I ran an online search this week… I couldn't find any, either. Meanwhile, there doesn't seem to be any publicly-accessible list of all the signatories to the Simone Veil Pact (or even just the politically-relevant ones)… which, I suppose, leaves us with only two options, really. Either Roberta Metsola DID deliver on that promise, at some point in the last six months… in which case, she must have done so in secret (and, for a change, without uploading any Facebook 'selfies', to commemorate the event); Or else… well, I imagine you can work out Option 2 for your- selves. Either way, however: it doesn't really matter all that much, be- cause 'signing the Simone Veil Pact' was only one of several promises that Roberta Metsola had made, both before and after her election as EP President last January. Euronews, for instance, report- ed that: "Roberta Metsola, the newly elected President of the European Parliament, has vowed to respect the hemicycle's major- ity opinion in favour of abortion, despite her long-standing polit- ical and personal stance against the procedure. 'The position of the parliament is unambiguous and unequivocal, and that is also my position,' she told Euronews in an attempt to shut down the controversy surrounding her in- vestiture." Now: here I have to concede that Roberta Metsola is at least partly correct. For it is abun- dantly true that the European Parliament's position is 'unam- biguous and unequivocal'; and it has only become much clearer, and more specific, ever since. Three weeks ago, for instance – just after the US Supreme court's decision to overturn 'Roe versus Wade' – the European Parlia- ment approved, by a wide ma- jority, a proposal calling for "the right to abortion to be included in the EU Charter of Fundamen- tal Rights". So unless Robert Metsola has performed yet another U-turn, while we were all looking the other way… as President of the European Parliament, THAT is now the official position she is committed to uphold. (And she said it herself, too, in no uncer- tain terms: "That is exactly what I will do throughout my man- date as president on this issue.") So… um… what has Roberta Metsola actually said, or done, to achieve that objective in prac- tice? Because if you close an eye at a single, throw-away 'tweet' last month – in which she de- scribed the Roe vs Wade deci- sion as a "worrying regression of women's rights" – Roberta Met- sola doesn't seem to have even so much as mentioned the issue, anywhere at all, in the entire first six months of her mandate. Still less has she done (or said) anything that can even remotely be described as 'aligned' with her own, new-found commitments to 'guarantee women's access to contraception and abortion'. And yet, Metsola surely knows that the EP's proposal is not ex- actly very easy to implement, on a political level. It would necessi- tate amendments to the Europe- an Treaties (in particular, Chap- ter 7 of the Charter)… which would, in turn, require consen- sus among all 27 member states. From that perspective: Rob- erta Metsola now occupies a rather important strategic role, in brokering the multi-lateral agreements that would be need- ed to ensure that the European Parliament's position on abor- tion – which is now Metsola's own position, remember? – is translated, once and for all, into REALITY. To put that another way: this is no longer the Roberta Metso- la we were all used to, until six months ago (who could – let's face it – always say pretty much anything she ever liked, on the subject of abortion: because we all knew it would never make a jot of difference anyway…) No, indeed. This is a very dif- ferent Roberta Metsola we are dealing with here: one whose words and (especially) actions – as the official embodiment of the EU's only democratically-elect- ed institution – do actually carry the necessary political weight, to at least have some kind of 'im- pact' on the final outcome. Yet while this new version of Roberta Metsola was very quick to promise her full support for 'the right of all European citizens to have access to safe, legal abor- tion' [note: that includes Mal- tese women, too, you know…] she hasn't exactly been in very much of a hurry to proceed to Phase Two of the operation: i.e., using all this new-found power and influence of hers, to actually PRESSURE individual European governments into complying. And it certainly wasn't for lack of opportunity, either. For if Roberta Metsola's first-ever action, as EP President, was to pledge allegiance to the Simone Veil Pact… her first-ever official visit, in that capacity, was pre- cisely to her own home country, Malta: which – at the risk of re- peating what has now become a rather tiresome mantra – is the only EU member state to active- ly deny its citizens those very same reproductive rights: in all circumstances, and with no exceptions whatsoever ('until death do us part, AMEN'). Honestly, though. What better opportunity could possibly arise, for Roberta Metsola to show- case her new determination to