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By Kate Abnett
STRASBOURG (Reuters) -Roberta Metsola, a Maltese lawmaker from the centre-right European People's Party, easily won a second term on Tuesday as president of the European Parliament and she appealed for a more inclusive politics to help combat polarisation.
Metsola, who in 2022 became the first woman in 20 years to head the European Union assembly, has emerged as a strong supporter of Ukraine in its war with Russia and its bid to join the EU. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy sent his congratulations.
Some 562 EU lawmakers out of the 623 who took part in Tuesday's vote backed her reappointment to the mainly ceremonial role for a further two and a half years, the largest margin of victory ever for a president of the European Parliament.
"Polarisation in our societies has led to more confrontational politics, even political violence," Metsola, 45, told the assembly.
"We need to move beyond this zero-sum thinking that has excluded people, that turns people away," she said.
Metsola urged the European Parliament to remain a strong supporter of Ukraine, the rule of law, and women's rights, while preparing to add new countries to the EU.
In his message of congratulations, Zelenskiy wrote on X: "I greatly appreciate President Metsola's personal involvement in supporting Ukraine, as well as her unwavering commitment to protecting people and upholding our European way of life."
Metsola was the first leader of an EU institution to visit Kyiv following Russia's February 2022 invasion.
She is only the second head of the European Parliament, after Germany's Martin Schulz, to win a second term since the assembly became a directly elected institution in 1979.
RAISING PARLIAMENT'S PROFILE
The 720-member Parliament, the European Union's only directly elected institution, negotiates and adopts EU legislative proposals and approves the bloc's budget.
In her first term, Metsola won plaudits from lawmakers for raising the Parliament's profile.
Some EU officials told Reuters they valued Metsola's ability to unite the centrist parties as a bulwark force in the assembly, after the far-right made strong gains in last month's European elections.
She has also tried to repair the Parliament's reputation after the Qatargate bribes-for-lobbying scandal, proposing tighter rules on lawmakers' financial declarations and lobbyist contacts, although campaigners say the reforms have not been fully enacted.
Metsola, a mother of four sons from the EU's smallest country, became an EU lawmaker in 2013, before rising through the institution's ranks to become its youngest ever president.
She faced criticism in the run-up to her initial election over her stance on abortion. As an EU lawmaker from Malta, where abortion is largely illegal, Metsola had opposed resolutions calling for women to have access to safe abortions.
But on becoming EU Parliament president, she committed to represent the EU assembly's position on sexual and reproductive rights, including the right of women to access safe abortions.
(Reporting by Kate Abnett, Charlotte Van CampenhoutAdditional reporting by Yuliia DysaEditing by Ros Russell and Gareth Jones)
