Parliament President Roberta Metsola’s guest appearance at the European Council is usually just a kind of warm-up for the actual meeting of the heads of state and government. At the most recent Council in mid-April, however, Mark Rutte got straight to the point: the outgoing Dutch Prime Minister warned that the Parliament should not take too long to elect a new leader after the European elections. After all, the EU could not afford to be without leadership for an extended period in such unstable times.