The EU parliament has picked a new president! After four round of voting, receiving 351 votes, Italy’s Antonio Tajani has been elected the new president of the European Parliament.

The new president is a member of the European People’s Party (EPP), a pro-European centre-right political party whose current leader is Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission.

The EPP group benefitted from a new coalition with the parliament’S liberals, the ALDE, who hope to kerb the influence of the anti-EU populists.

Mr Tajani is a former spokesman for Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi and an ex-European Commissioner of Transport as well as Enterprise and Industry.

“Today a new era begins in the chamber. I will be everybody’s president, I don’t intend to be the prime minister of the European Union” Mr Tajani announced.

While even his supporters say that Tajani doesn’t have the charisma of his predecessor, Martin Shultz.

Philippe Lamberts, a Belgian Green MEP stated “He won’t have the flamboyance of Schultz. But I count on him to be a faithful servant of the grand coalition politics.

MEPs supported Tajani’s presidential bid because of his political experience as well as his efforts to maintain strong ties to MEPs.

Photo Credits: The Independent