In the
2019 European Parliament election in Italy, Sassoli was re-elected to the European Parliament, with 128,533 votes. On 2 July 2019, he was proposed by the
Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D) as the new president of the European Parliament. On the following day, Sassoli was elected president by the assembly with 345 votes in favor, succeeding
Antonio Tajani. He became the seventh Italian to hold the office. ,
Ursula von der Leyen In his acceptance speech, Sassoli talked about the European project as a dream of peace and democracy. He said European citizens showed that they still believed in the project and talked about being proud of European diversity. He also added that "Europe will be stronger only with a Parliament which plays a more important role". Moreover, in his first public act as the newly elected president, Sassoli decided to pay tribute to all the victims of
terrorism in Europe, attending one of the sites of the
2016 Brussels bombings to commemorate the victims at
Maalbeek/Maelbeek metro station. He said: "We must pay tribute to the victims in the capital of Europe. We must commemorate the European citizens who were victims of these attacks. This is a tribute to all the victims of terrorism. I wanted to start my time as President with this symbolic act." in Brussels, 3 September 2019 On 19 December 2019, Sassoli asked for the liberation of
Oriol Junqueras, former vice president of
Catalonia and recently elected
MEP, who was imprisoned after the
2017 Spanish constitutional crisis. As a member of the European Parliament, Junqueras benefits from
parliamentary immunity. Sassoli urged the Spanish authorities to comply with the European Parliament ruling. In the midst of the
COVID-19 outbreak that was beginning to deeply affect European countries, on 2 March 2020 Sassoli ordered the cancellation of visits to the European Parliament and the suspension of more than 100 events. On 10 March, he self-isolated in his Brussels residence after visiting Italy, as the Italian government ordered a national lockdown to deal with the spread of the virus. Following a videoconference with the leaders of the political groups, on 19 March he called an extraordinary session of Parliament for 26 March to approve new measures to address COVID-19 and for the first time a remote voting system would be used. In June 2020, he signed the international appeal in favour of the so-called purple economy ("Towards a cultural renaissance of the economy"), published in
Corriere della Sera,
El País and
Le Monde. In April 2021, Sassoli was included in a list of eight public officials that were banned by Russia's
Ministry of Foreign Affairs from entering the country in retaliation for
European Union sanctions on Russians. After the Polish
Constitutional Court ruled that parts of the
Treaty on European Union were incompatible with its constitution, Sassoli said that "today's verdict in Poland cannot remain without consequences. The primacy of EU law must be undisputed. Violating it means challenging one of the founding principles of our union". On 14 December 2021, it was announced that Sassoli informed S&D MEPs of his intention not to seek a second term of office as of January 2022, alleging that "we have done a lot to enlarge the majority of Ursula von der Leyen, […] I don’t want to destroy the European front. For that reason, I will not be available". He was among the potential candidates of the Democratic Party to succeed
Sergio Mattarella in the
2022 Italian presidential election. ==Personal life==