Rachida Dati, France's Justice Minister

Famous women are taking over the EU Parliament after impressive gains in the recent EU elections, says EU Observer. 

The Dior-wearing, glam girl Rachida Dati, France’s first justice minister with an immigrant background, secured a safe victory for Nicolas Sarkozy’s Union for a Popular Movement (UMP). The party scored 27.8 percent of the votes, eleven percentage points ahead of the rival Socialist party.

In the UK, Argentine-born Spanish accountant Marta Andreasen also got a seat in the European Parliament, but on a eurosceptic ticket on the lists of the Independence Party (Ukip). A former EU commission accountant, Ms Andreasen became well known after she refused to sign off the 2001 accounts, citing “serious and glaring” irregularities in the commission’s books. She was suspended only months later for “failure to show sufficient loyalty and respect,” underwent a disciplinary procedure and in the end was fired in 2005.

Meanwhile, former Miss Italy contender Barbara Matera was also popular with the voters, scoring second in the south of the Peninsula after her party leader Silvio Berlusconi. The scandal-prone premier kept only Ms Matera on the list, from an initial handful of top models and TV hostesses aimed at “renewing the image of Italy in Europe.” The 27-year old TV hostess rejected her showgirl image and said her bid was challenging the “prejudice” that beauty and intellect cannot co-exist.

As flashy as Ms Matera and as well-connected to the country’s top politics is Elena Basescu, the daughter of the Romanian president, who won her seat in the European Parliament with 4.2 percent of the votes.

She ran as an independent, but according to an investigation ran by the news portal Hotnews.ro, the centre-right Liberal-Democratic Party (PDL) of her father “sacrificed” some of the votes of its members in order to get her in. The journalist phoned up eight party branches across the country, pretending he was a party official from Bucharest and asked about their strategies to secure the votes for Ms Basescu. Five of the eight branches confirmed they had activists who would vote for her.

The president’s daughter rejoined PDL on the day following the elections and claimed she was the target of media attacks because of her family origin.

More here.