EU Parliament President Metsola appoints brother-in-law as chief of staff

BRUSSELS — European Parliament President Roberta Metsola has appointed her brother-in-law as her chief of staff.
Matthew Tabone, who started working at the European Parliament for Metsola in 2013, succeeds Leticia Zuleta De Reales Ansaldo. She is taking on a new role as director of relationships with national parliaments in the European Parliament.
In a post on Facebook, Maltese MEP Alex Agius Saliba of the Labour Party, described Metsola’s move as “rampant nepotism.” Metsola is from the arch-rival Nationalist Party.
“Imagine if I or a representative of the [Labour Party] appointed a member of their family to the highest position in their office,” Agius Saliba wrote.
Tabone has been a close aide to Metsola for years. After he started working for Metsola, he married her sister in 2015, before Metsola became European Parliament president.
`Then in late 2022, Tabone was touted for the chief of staff role by Metsola. In the end, she refrained from naming him as the timing lined up with Qatargate, the cash-for-influence scandal that rocked the European Parliament.
A Metsola spokesperson referred POLITICO to a statement on the appointment.
Metsola’s previous appointments have also proved controversial.
In the fall of 2022, Alessandro Chiocchetti was promoted from being her chief of staff to the Parliament’s secretary-general, a powerful post overseeing the institution’s expansive bureaucracy.
The previous secretary-general, Klaus Welle, spent 13 years transforming his post into a power center that influenced everything from Parliament’s agenda to who occupied the institution’s top jobs. His departure set off jockeying among the Parliament’s political groups, with the European People’s Party, Parliament’s largest group, trying to figure out how it could hold on to the mighty post.
As a close aide to Metsola, Chiocchetti was seen as the beneficiary of favoritism to get that role. He was also accused of benefitting from secret horse-trading that saw Parliament create several new jobs to secure political support for Chiocchetti and keep the role in the EPP’s hands. 
“The sordid saga to install Mr. Chiocchetti as the new secretary-general of the European Parliament is bound to damage the Parliament’s reputation in the eyes of European citizens and representatives of other EU institutions,” said Heidi Hautala, then a Green MEP.
Metsola and her center-right European People’s Party (EPP), which backed Chiocchetti, insisted they were just following Parliament procedure. 
“It was the most open process in the history of this institution,” Metsola said in Sept. 2022. “The vacancy was open several months ago, it was open for everybody to apply. Eligibility checks were conducted, and for the very first time ever, there was more than one candidate presented for the job.”
Max Griera contributed to this report.