Welcome Tilly Metz and Romeo Franz
New members of the Greens/EFA Group
Tilly Metz and Romeo Franz are the new members of the Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament. Tilly Metz follows Claude Turmes who moved to Luxembourg as State Secretary for Sustainable Development and Infrastructure yesterday (Monday, 2 July). Romeo Franz succeeds Jan Philipp Albrecht, who will be sworn in as Minister for the Environment, Agriculture, the Energy Revolution and Digitisation in Schleswig-Holstein on 31 August.
Tilly Metz studied Psychopedagogy and was a local councillor in the city of Luxembourg until she took up her seat in the European Parliament. From 2005 to 2011 she was mayor of Weiler-la-Tour. Tilly Metz has been Vice-President of the Luxembourg Government's High Council for the Disabled since 2016 and has been working for the social inclusion of people with special needs for decades.
Tilly Metz will join the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy and will focus on the European research agenda after 2020, research on rare diseases, the horizontal InvestEU Research Fund and the EU Research Programme for the Competitiveness of Small and Medium Enterprises (COSME).
As an alternate member of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, she will work for a fundamental reform of agricultural policy and strong European animal welfare standards.
Romeo Franz is an expert on civil rights and has made a name for himself fighting for the rights of Sinti and Roma people. From 2014 until assuming his mandate, he was Managing Director of the Hildegard Lagrenne Foundation in Mannheim, which is committed to the qualification, promotion and counselling of people with a Roma background.
In the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, Romeo Franz will take over the topics of his predecessor, the scandal surrounding Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, Privacy Shield, as well as ePrivacy and eEvidence. He will also focus on the fight against right-wing populism and the discrimination of Sinti and Roma people.
As an alternate member of the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection, he will work for fair rules in the Digital Single Market.
Romeo Franz is musician and composer of the violin piece "Mare Manuschenge" for the Berlin memorial for the Sinti and Roma murdered under National Socialism.
