As published on the Sunday Circle: 04/05/2014.
Roberta Metsola is a woman in a lifelong relationship with the European project and its values, David Schembri discovers.
Roberta Metsola doesn’t do fluff. She doesn’t want her pictures airbrushed and wrinkles smoothed out – she wants to come across as she is. And what she is, is a 35-year-old mother of three, EU affairs lawyer and MEP for the Nationalist Party. She is now in her third electoral campaign, but she hasn’t been particularly idle in between.
Having specialised in EU law at the College of Europe in Bruges, Roberta served as Malta’s Legal and Judicial Cooperation Attaché within Malta’s Permanent Representation to the EU for eight years. There, she was involved in negotiations for key EU treaties, including the Lisbon Treaty and European Fiscal Mechanisms. Her EU legal career shifted up a gear when she became legal advisor to Catherine Ashton, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. “That was an honour, as well as a highlight in my career,” Metsola says. That job was to be short-lived – 10 months into her tenure, she was called upon to fill the EP seat vacated by Simon Busuttil when he became PN leader.
As one of a mere six Maltese members in the EP, she sits on four committees – including the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee (LIBE), which deals with a wide range of issues, including human rights and migration. It is, by her own admission, more than her fair share, but she’s not complaining. “We’re only six MEPs, and there are 20 committees, so we need to have more than our fair share; we have to at least try to cover all of them,” she says. “Even if I don’t sit on a committee, and an issue which affects the Maltese community is being discussed on it, I will make sure that I send my colleagues there so that MEPs from other countries sitting on the committee know of the Maltese view.”
“Maltese” is the key word here, and Metsola stresses that she represents the whole of Malta. “The EP represents a forum where what is not necessarily possible on a national level can be brought at a European level,” she says – citing this as the reason she took up matters such as the citizenship issue and the Marsaxlokk gas tanker to Europe.
One of the main pillars of her work is the protection of people’s rights, which she believes have to be guarded under the current administration, particularly when it comes to employees in the civil service. “Malta Tagħna Lkoll is turning out to be a big farce,” she says, “because if you aren’t of the same colour as the government you are likely to be kicked out of where you are or transferred for no reason. One year ago, I would have said it was a perception because very few people had come up to me with that issue, but day in, day out, knocking on doors, receiving correspondence from people who feel wronged by this government make it no longer a perception.”
“People expect me to talk about women because I’m a woman. I would expect those questions to be put to everybody.”
Apart from being a hardworking politician in her third electoral campaign, Roberta is the mother of three boys: Luca, Alec and Marc. How does she cope? “This is the right year to be asked that question, because it’s the EU year for work-life balance. It’s a year when we all get asked how it can be done, and my answer is that there is never an easy solution,” Roberta says. “It requires a lot of hard work, but I have a very supportive family in my husband and our parents, and we manage, week by week, to organise our life. My children know that their mother is always on the go, and they know me as that,” she says. She does make it a point to put her boys to bed every day, even if it means leaving the campaign trail for an hour to do it. “But I’d rather do that than not be there when they fall asleep,” she says.
Her husband, the Harvard-educated Ukko, who contested the 2009 EP elections for the Finnish National Coalition Party, also knows what politics entails, and she is grateful that she has someone who knows what is needed of him during campaign time. After that, however, it’s “absolutely 50-50,” she stresses. This role sharing is not something new to her: Roberta and her two younger sisters were brought up in a household where responsibilities were shared, and where they were taught to be independent – indeed, both her sisters have gone on to academic careers.
“But beyond that, [our parents] taught us to be strong. When church schools were closed in the 80s, I remember our parents being resilient to political oppression. I think they instilled that rebellion against oppression when I was six years old,” Roberta says.
“I’d say European Law is my vocation, but I’m a geek, I’m a real geek.”
Roberta has achieved success in her chosen field, and doesn’t feel that her being a woman has impeded her from reaching her professional and political goals. That said, she does believe there are further steps that should be taken to improve women’s participation in public and working life – but she does not count positive discrimination to be one of them. “I agree with merit and competence,” she says. However, she does view increased childcare facilities as an example of a measure which could help more women enter the world of employment. She acknowledges, however, that there are many women in Malta who suffer because of their economic situation, and these issues had to be addressed – but not just by women. “People expect me to talk about women because I’m a woman. I would expect those questions to be put to everybody,” she says.
Instead she wants to talk employment, particularly for young people, which is the greatest challenge Europe is facing for the next five years. For this to happen, the EPP is working to incentivise youth and economies to grow, “because once economies grow, you can attract foreign investment and you can have jobs,” she says. Jobs, she says, “are important because that’s the road to fulfilment in a person’s life. In order for you to be able to contribute back to society, you need to have people who are willing to be employed or to employ.”
Time for more “fluff” though – how does she relax? “I really like reading: I’m currently reading a book called In Defence of Politics,” she says, somewhat apologetically. “It’s by Bernard Crick, and it tries to humanise politicians and tries to say that politics is necessary.” Perhaps expecting something totally different to her day job is inconceivable, given her strong attachment to it. “I’d say European Law is my vocation, but I’m a geek, I’m a real geek. For me, reading case law from the European Courts of Justice is fun,” she says. Does this woman, who is clearly in love with the European project, see it lasting? “I would say that if it didn’t fail at the height of the economic crisis two years ago, then it won’t fail now,” she says.
“The EU has emerged stronger from the crisis; the euro, contrary to what some said, has not led to the doom and gloom some were foreseeing for countries that were on a strong economic path,” she says. “Given the political will of the countries that created the political union to ensure that Europe never falls back to the situation of World War I and II and the economic strength, I don’t think it will fail.”
http://www.sundaycircle.com/2014/05/seeing-stars/
