Luxembourg MEP Monica Semedo has been suspended from her duties for ten days.  Photo: Maison Moderne/Archives

Luxembourg MEP Monica Semedo has been suspended from her duties for ten days.  Photo: Maison Moderne/Archives

Luxembourg MEP Monica Semedo has been suspended for ten days for bullying staff, the president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, announced on Tuesday after a previous sanction for the same offence.

Semedo in January 2021 was suspended for 15 days, barring her from participating in parliamentary activities, for “psychological harassment,” a penalty issued after a 10-month probe that yielded a dossier of more than 100 pages.

The 38-year-old and on Tuesday was issued another 10-day ban, RTL first reported. 

“The MEP has been informed and also has the right to appeal internally,” Metsola said during a plenary session.

Semedo left her Luxembourg party, the DP, after the first case in 2021 and sits on the Renew Europe group in the European parliament as an independent candidate. 

The MEP in a press release in November 2022 denied the new allegations while under internal investigation.

At the time of publication, Semedo had not yet commented publicly on the suspension.

Following the first sanction in 2021, she apologised to her former assistants in a , saying that she “never intended to hurt or humiliate any of them. I realised too late that my strong messages, high standards, the way I expressed myself and the way I criticised them had hurt them.”

An official from the cabinet of then-president David Sassoli in 2021 told Politico that the report into the allegations at the time included “countless offences, insults, aggressive treatment, intimidation and attacks in public” by Semedo against three of her former assistants, calling it “very serious.”

(Additional writing by Cordula Schnuer)

This story was first published in French on . It has been translated and edited for Delano.