On the day of the famous anger in the White House between Donald Trump, JD Vance and Volodimir Zelenski, on February 28, the main European leaders went out to support President Ukraine, but Giorgia Meloni kept silent. The Italian Prime Minister, leader of the Ultra -Right Party Brothers of Italy, had already done the same after Vance’s controversial speech in Munich, on February 14, in which he criticized European values. Then Meloni also silenced, and in those weeks she convulses that Trump began to fly the bridges with Europe and Ukraine always remained silent.
However, days later, on February 22, the Italian leader participated in videoconference in the Convention of the Republican Party in Washington and then praised Vance’s words in Munich, putting on her part. He said that “the elites” had been outraged because an American were to give them lessons, but “if they had shown the same pride when Europe lost strategic autonomy, ligating their economy to autocratic regimes, or when European borders and our lifestyle were threatened by mass clandestine immigration, we would now live in a stronger Europe.” Great applause. Jordan Bardella, president of the formation of the French ultra -right, national group, had canceled his participation in the event after Steve Bannon, one of Trump’s ideologues, made a Nazi greeting there, but she had no problems. For her to keep the thread with Trump, and also with Elon Musk, with whom she has a personal friendship, she is a priority.
This is Meloni’s pattern of behavior these weeks, given the worldwide shock due to the turn of the White House foreign policy: uncheck in Europe of criticism, complicit winks to the United States. Always looking for a role of Trump’s privileged interlocutor in the EU, bridge with Washington, as it is the European leader more related to the tycoon, without being Viktor Orbán, seen directly in Brussels by many almost as an infiltrator of Putin and Trump. The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, appreciates Meloni, has repeated that “she works well” with her and in these two years he has gained respect in that gray area that has managed to be created with one foot on each side of the sanitary cord, where the European populist ultra -right begins. And now he intends to do the same in the stormy relationship that has been established with Trump, with one foot on each side of the Atlantic.
In these balances, the time of truth can arrive soon, with the commercial war freshly initiated with the United States, for the moment only with the tariffs that have imposed on steel and aluminum from other countries (and the European response with a retaliation for the value of 26,000 million euros). Italy is the most exposed European country, after Germany, and will be difficult to defend Trump at home. 22.2% of its exports outside the EU go to the US market and it is estimated that the coup will cost between 4,000 and 7,000 million euros to Italian companies. Mainly in the wine sectors, Prosecco and cider; olive oil; cars, yachts and motorcycles; medicines; fashion and luxury; and industrial machinery. Meloni is also thinking of avoiding this.
She presents it as pure diplomacy, regardless of ideologies. When he finally talked about the anger in the Oval Office, two days later, when he arrived at the European Summit with the United Kingdom held in London on March 2, he showed the most British self -control, even if she is famous for her temperament. “We cannot fall into the error of dividing or favoring a division of the West,” he diagnosed. As? “Working coldly, not being dragged by emotion, and strategicly reasoning,” he explained. He called not to get carried away by the “Tifoserie”, Football simile in reference to the fans of each team. “Everything I can do to keep the United West, I will do,” he concluded.
Translated, consider any initiative that does not have Trump. Obviously, in this context, in Rome it caused the visit to Washington of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, on February 24. Not only for his continuous prominence, but for the autonomy he claims. Meloni’s gesture was already eloquent at the summit that Macron summoned a week before in Paris, with the main European countries: the Italian leader arrived an hour late and the group photo jumped, did not want to appear in the image of an Anti-Trump front. A visual uncheck, not just made of silences.
Meloni, the only head of European government who attended Trump’s possession in January, works to close a trip to Washington shortly, has also proposed a summit between the US and the EU, and does not hesitate to make gestures of equidistance. On February 24, the third anniversary of the Russian attack on Ukraine, no one from the Italian government went to EU support acts in kyiv. Nor to the G-7 meeting that was held there, to avoid positioning himself in a direct clash with the White House, and although the Prime Minister thought not to participate, claiming agenda problems, in the end he connected by videoconference.
In the European Council last Thursday, which agreed to the great plan to rearm the EU, Meloni intervened to invite everyone, again, to leave emotions aside, as the Italian press reflected, and try to introduce into the conclusions an explicit recognition to Trump for his efforts to stop the war in Ukraine. Most likely, the “coalition of volunteers” Europe promoted by the United Kingdom and France is not going to London next Saturday.
The Italian ultra -rightist leader also has an eye in Italy, of course. His government, coalition of three parties, usually has three different positions in relation to Ukraine – although it is true that the opposition – and has been seen again on Wednesday in the European Parliament in the vote of the Rearme Plan. Forza Italia, of the European Popular Party, in favor; Matteo Salvini League, Filorruso and Trump fan, against; Brothers of Italy, Meloni’s party, in the middle, with doubts and negotiating nuances, although in the end he voted in favor.
At home, Meloni is aware of the restlessness produced by a career of weapons and has in his government the constant nuisance of the league, which submits to daily harassment to go through the authentic ultra -right party and is now very pacifist. His European group, conservatives and European reformists (ECR), also asked to postpone the vote of the support of support for Ukraine after the high -fire agreement on Tuesday between the US and Zelenski, because “it can trigger hate to Trump” and disturb the US president.
