EU parliament’s Israel delegation elects new president
Italian MEP Fulvio Martusciello replaces outgoing Bastiaan Belder, who backed Israel after Gaza conflict
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The European Parliament’s Delegation for relations with Israel elected Italian MEP Fulvio Martusciello on Thursday as its new president.
“I’m ready to get to work immediately. In two weeks I will be already in Israel for a first institutional meeting,” Martusciello said. “I will concentrate my efforts to contribute to the peace process in the region.”
Martusciello is a member of the parliament’s largest faction, the European People’s Party, and will be succeeding Dutch MEP Bastiaan Belder, of the European Conservatives and Reformists Group, who toured southern Israel last month and made supportive statements in the wake of the 50-day conflict between Israel and Hamas.
“It’s important for as many European and world leaders as possible to come here and acquire a better understanding of what Israel is dealing with,” Belder said, according to the Jewish National Fund.
The vote was held at the delegation’s constituent meeting Thursday morning.
In December, an interparliamentary meeting between the European Parliament delegation and its equivalent in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, will take place in Brussels in the presence of Martusciello’s counterpart, Avishay Braverman, a Labor Party MK.
The Delegation for relations with Israel is responsible for “maintaining and developing Parliament’s contacts and relations with the Knesset.”
The Times of Israel Community.