ROBERTA METSOLA HAS PLENTY OF SUPERLATIVES TO HER name. She is the youngest ever President of the European Parliament; the first from Malta, the bloc's smallest country; and the first woman in two decades. But there's one thing that landed her in the history books that she never expected. On Dec. 10, 2022, Metsola became the first President of the European Parliament to join a police raid against a fellow lawmaker. "It was sad," Metsola, who turns 45 in January, tells TIME from her office in Brussels. It was like "a punch in the stomach."
Earlier that day, Belgian authorities had notified Metsola that to comply with local law, she had to join police by 9 p.m. for a raid against lawmaker Marc Tarabella as part of a corruption investigation. So Metsola hopped on a three-hour flight from Malta to Brussels, then rushed some 70 miles into the Belgian countryside. With armed police at her side, she knocked at Tarabella's door with minutes to spare.
The bust happened to come during the FIFA World Cup quarterfinals. "There was France and England playing in a bar next door," Metsola recalls, "and I just remember hearing the cheers and thinking, Look at what I'm doing." The coincidence was not a happy one. A day earlier, police began carrying out raids and arrests across Brussels, where the European Parliament does most of its work, amid an investigation into whether World Cup host Qatar had bribed European Parliament officials. Bags of cash totaling some €1.5 million ($1.58 million) were seized during raids in homes and offices in Belgium, Italy, and Greece in the days that followed, in a scandal that ripped through not only the European Parliament but also the E.U. at large. Dubbed Qatargate, it was one of the biggest corruption scandals to hit the bloc in decades.
この記事は Time の January 24, 2024 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、8,500 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です ? サインイン
この記事は Time の January 24, 2024 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、8,500 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン
Michael Crow The president of Arizona State on handling campus protests, embracing AI, the future of college sports, and partying
Since Oct. 7, protests and conflicts over free speech have erupted on college campuses and beyond. It seems that the job of university president has become one of the more stressful occupations in America. What's your stress level right now?
The most anticipated summer TV shows
The sun is coming out, the days are getting longer, and life somehow just seems that little bit happier. But even as nature beckons us out of doors, the lure of the fluorescent blue-light box remains, especially as a season once associated with reruns and stagnation only seems to get more packed with appointment viewing.
The decades-long build to Eruption
WHEN MICHAEL CRICHTON AND HIS WIFE SHERRI FIRST started dating, all they did was hike. Every weekend there they were, taking in the scenery from the coasts of California to the mountains of Hawaii. The island of Kauai was their favorite place, its rivers carving through volcanic rock and steep, jagged cliffs cutting the sky. The couple would wake before dawn to be first ones out on the trails, and together they'd take in the sunrise.
OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES
A new comedy takes on the unfiltered realities of pregnancy, motherhood, and friendship
MOST INFLUENTIAL COMPANIES 2024
From retail behemoths to AI pioneers, these are the businesses shaping our world
EL LOCO
PRESIDENT JAVIER MILEI'S MISSION TO REMAKE ARGENTINA
The parents who regret having children
NO ONE REGRETS HAVING A CHILD, OR SO IT'S SAID. I'VE heard this often, usually after I'm asked if I have children, then, when I say I don't, if I plan to. I tend to evade the question, as I find that the truth-I have no plans to be a parent is likely to invite swift dissent. I'll be told that I'll change my mind, that I'm wrong, and that while I'll regret not having a child, people don't regret the obverse. Close family, acquaintances, and total strangers have said this for years; I let it slide, knowing that at the very least, the last part is a fiction.
Health Matters
TICK SEASON IS ONCE AGAIN UPON us, and so are fears of Lyme disease. Most people who contract Lyme after a tick bite fully recover after a course of antibiotics-but for roughly 10% of people, for reasons doctors don't fully understand, the medicine doesn't take, leaving them with chronic symptoms including fatigue, brain fog, and neurological issues that can be completely debilitating. Other people with Lyme are never treated at all, which can cause lasting issues without clear knowledge of where they originated.
Japan's ruling party burns through another leader
IT'S NOT EASY BEING JAPAN'S Prime Minister. Though the center-right Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has dominated the country's politics for nearly seven decades, the top job has frequently changed hands. Fumio Kishida is just the third leader in the past quarter-century to last at least two years. Yet once again, change is coming.
DEMONIZING RURAL AMERICA
By the time I was 7 or 8 years old, I was keenly aware of my father's drug use. He didn't snort pills in front of me yet―he saved that for my teen years—but he talked about pills freely, and I knew he took them. And by the time I became an adult, everyone in my nuclear family-and plenty in my extended family-was struggling to cope with the impacts of violence, incarceration, and addiction.
