There are three main candidates seen as the frontrunners in the race to be European Parliament president<br /><br /> The favourite is Italy’s Antonio Tajani: a former EU commissioner and someone who is close to ex-Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.<br /><br /> “I was elected here. I had a large majority as First Vice-President of Parliament, ad the most votes, and I have always been in the same party unlike others, so there is no problem with my political party,” Tajani said in an interview with euronews last month.<br /><br /> His centre-left rival is his compatriot Gianni Pittella, who claims that the days of the two parties working hand in hand is over.<br /><br /> They were part of a Grand Coalition over the past two years to steer legislation through parliament.<br /><br /> “The world has changed: we’ve had Brexit, we’ve had Trump’s victory. We need to understand that there are the signs coming from our citizens that push towards a stronger polarisation in politics,” he said last month. <br /><br /> “We want to a European parliament with a clear, civil, correct choice between conservatives and progressives, and we are a fundamental part of the progressive wing”.<br /><br /> And then there is former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, a Liberal MEP.<br /><br /> He has been under fire this week following after a planned pact with Italy’s anti euro party the Five Star Movement collapsed amid pressure from his existing political allies.<br /><br /> Verhofstadt, an veteran EU federalist, says he wanted to undermine the Eurosceptic bloc in the European Parliament.<br /><br /> “Maybe I am a little bit naïve in these questions after more than 40 years of politics, that can happen. And it’s not maybe my first mistake that I have made in my life, in my political life,” he told a Politico event on Wednesday.<br /><br /> “When I see that number of these people are not going to pro-European groups for the moment, at this moment that we are speaking and debating, maybe it was not so a bad thing, it will weaken euroscepticism, weaken populism and weaken nationalism.”<br />
