Antonio Tajani won EU Parliament’s presidential election with 351 votes in a final face-off with Gianni Pittella who secured 282 votes. Guy Verhofstadt withdrew his candidature before the vote.
The election of a new European Parliament President began with three-minute speeches by the six candidates, outlining their ideas on how to lead the chamber over the next two and half years.
“I belive in Europe, but we need to change. We need a strong Parliament (…) and a president, not a prime minister, who has experience and I would like to put my 23 years of working in this institution at your disposal. We need a more democratic Europe, we cannot close ourselves off in Brussels, we need to open up to our citizens and we need to hold series of initiatives to open up the door of the Parliament to our citizens,” he said in a short presentation.
Since 1994, Tajani was involved in the EU institutions. In 2008-2010 he was Vice-President of the European Commission, with responsibility for transport, in 2010-2014 he was Vice-President of the European Commission, with responsibility for industry and entrepreneurship and since 2014 he was Vice-President of the European Parliament.
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