Giorgia Meloni was one of the winners of the European election night of June 9 and was seen as the leader of the new wave of European right-wing populism, with the added bonus of being the most presentable of all of them and, therefore, the essential interlocutor with a political space that, she thought, could not be ignored. However, a month later, her plan is falling apart and she is perfectly ignored. The Italian Prime Minister wanted to enter the decision-making room of the EU, but the cordon sanitaire is still extended for her and Ursula von der Leyen and her allies, social democrats and liberals, have left her out of the power-sharing of the Commission. She came out very hurt from the last European Council last June, where she protested against a “pre-cooked” pact.
At the same time, the map of the populist right has shifted under her feet and from being the leader of the third European political family, the dominant one in the far camp, European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), she has seen the Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, steal her portfolio with his new group, Patriots for Europe. Vox has jumped into it, a flight that Meloni’s party, Brothers of Italy, has seen as a betrayal. With the announced transfer of the other block, where Le Pen and the League were, called Identity and Democracy (ID), to the new platform of the Hungarian president, it surpasses Meloni’s in seats and relegates it to fourth position. It is a further shift to the right of that entire space, towards Vladimir Putin and waiting for Donald Trump, who now makes it look like the watered-down right. She has emptied ECR, the political artefact that she has carefully built over the years, which she has chaired since 2020, on whose door Orbán knocked in vain after leaving the European People’s Party in 2021, but which is not helping her to be considered respectable among the traditional parties.
In Italy, her partner Matteo Salvini, leader of the League, continues the same game of attrition. Every day he has a joke to make it seem like he is a more authentic extremist than her (he has proposed, for example, that children’s vaccinations should not be obligatory). It is a daily betrayal for Meloni, who has spent two years investing in the image of a reliable and pro-European government and has Salvini as vice president. The internal red line in the European magma of the far right is sympathy for Russia, and Meloni is being left alone. Among the major parties, only the Polish PiS can hold out with her in her European clan, due to its aversion to Moscow, but it represents another burden in her desire to win. presentabilitybecause this party, when in power, earned sanctions from the EU for its illiberal measures.
The doubt of whether to support Von der Leyen or not
In reality, Meloni is trapped in her ambiguity, the same that has allowed her to go far so far, but it is not known how much further. The distribution of power in Brussels has brought her contradictions to light, with the question of whether she will rise as a moderate or an extremist, depending on the occasion, and now she finds herself in no man’s land. It has also brought to light the divisions in her governing coalition in Italy. Forza Italia, Berlusconi’s party and member of the European People’s Party, which, as events have turned out, now represents the serious Italian right, intends to win her over to support Von der Leyen and move closer to the centre. On the other hand, the League is pulling her in, so that she will deny him her vote. Salvini, who fell in the European elections, has entered into a clear strategy of radicalisation, in search of his own identity to try to stop the erosion that being in the government, eclipsed by Meloni, means for him.
The Italian prime minister, who in her country wants to occupy the entire conservative political spectrum from the centre to the far right, aspires to be accepted in Europe as the leader of a post-fascist right wing, but which has left its past behind and now has an institutional and reasonable profile. This week, for example, she will be at the NATO summit as a reliable partner who must commit to increasing military spending to 2% of GDP. These are decisive days of negotiation with the other European leaders for Meloni, with a view to the vote of the European Parliament on 18 July that must give the yes to Von der Leyen. Meloni is debating whether to support her or not, calculating how she will fare better and does not rule out giving her occasional support from now on, increasing the profile of her uniqueness.
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This will earn her accusations from her political world of having sold out, but she, in turn, also wants to be able to sell at home that she has a hand in Brussels and her strategy is bearing fruit. For example, by getting an executive vice-president of the Commission (an Italian commissioner is not enough for her because it is assumed that it is already her turn). But it is not at all certain that she will get it and so far the impression is that everything is taking place without her. What she gets may be more due to her status as head of government of the third country of the EU, a member of the G-7, than to her political weight. She hoped that her group could influence the balance of power, but Von der Leyen is doing it alone with her usual allies and even talks with the Greens, but not with her. Meloni’s last pragmatic way out is to position herself as a bridge with the ultras, in case there is something to discuss with them.
In the midst of this crossroads, Meloni had to come out last week to make the umpteenth denial that his party is neo-fascist. It was following a journalistic investigation by the digital newspaper Fanpagewho infiltrated a reporter in his youth party, Juventud Nacional, and recorded how in public they were very democratic, but in private they let loose with Nazi and anti-Semitic barbarities, amidst laughter. This perception that the party plays both sides, with a facade to show and an internal core nostalgic for fascism, has again increased Meloni’s image of ambivalence. Finally, he wrote a letter to say bluntly: “There is no room in Brothers of Italy for racist or anti-Semitic positions, just as there is no room for those nostalgic for the totalitarianism of the 20th century or for any manifestation of stupid folklore.” In these cases, he is often reminded, for example, that his colleague Ignazio La Russa, president of the Senate, has boasted of having a bust of Mussolini at home and that he will never throw it away because it is a gift from his father.
As for the Italian opposition, it is experiencing moments of euphoria due to the good results of the Democratic Party (PD) and the left together with the Greens in the European elections, which have once again triggered the fantasy of a grand coalition capable of winning the elections one day (although there are still three years left). A perspective reinforced by the triumph of the New Popular Front in France. It is a recurring dream in the Italian left since it won its last general elections in 2006 with a crowded alliance, although it then lasted only two years. Governing is the problem. In the photo taken last Friday, leaders of different parties and associations were almost out of the frame; there were 34 of them.
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