Trump is
a problem for Europe’s most important hard-right leaders
His antics
are causing headaches for Giorgia Meloni and Marine Le Pen
Illustration:
Klawe Rzeczy
Mar 23rd
2025|PARIS AND ROME
Correction
(April 1st 2025): The introduction to this article suggested that the absence
of Italy’s Chief of Defence Staff, General Portolano, from a meeting of the
“coalition of the willing” reflected Italian misgivings over Europe’s response
to President Trump. We now understand the general was not expected at the
meeting, which was for more junior officers.
WHEN
UKRAINE’S allies’ military top brass met in London on March 20th to discuss a
possible peacekeeping force, one of their number was missing. The chief of
Italy’s defence staff, General Luciano Portolano, apparently had more important
things to do and was represented by more junior officers. His absence was
suggestive. The meeting was part of Europe’s response to the growing
disengagement of America under President Donald Trump. But Italy’s hard-right
prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, is a friend of Mr Trump, and that has put her
in an awkward position.
Mr Trump’s
re-election initially invigorated the European hard right. The American
president’s anti-woke national conservatism chimes with the politics of leaders
such as Ms Meloni. Boosted by Elon Musk, a social-media mogul who is the
president’s ally, it also looked set to help the electoral chances of
hard-right candidates. The most important of these is France’s Marine Le Pen,
who leads polls for the country’s presidential election in 2027. (Judges will
decide on March 31st whether to block her from running over alleged misuse of
European Parliament funds.)
Yet the
speed with which Mr Trump has upended transatlantic relations, undermined NATO
and distanced himself from Ukraine has discomfited hard-right leaders. It has
put Ms Meloni at odds with Italy’s partners in the European Union and with
other allies. And it has exposed the ambiguous relationship of Ms Le Pen and
her party, the National Rally (RN), with their American analogues: French and
American nationalism do not always mix.
Unfashionably
late
Ms Meloni
has made plain her discomfort with Europe’s assertive response to Mr Trump. She
turned up 50 minutes late for the first Trump-era crisis meeting, organised in
Paris by France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, on February 17th. Italian
officials said she disapproved of the format, which did not include all 27 EU
states. When Sir Keir Starmer, Britain’s prime minister, held a broader virtual
summit a month later, she waited until the night before to decide to take part.
Last month,
when Volodymyr Zelensky was rebuked in the White House by Mr Trump and
Vice-President J.D. Vance, Ms Meloni was, conspicuously, the only major
European leader not to declare support for the Ukrainian president. On March
12th in the European Parliament the deputies of her hard-right Brothers of
Italy party abstained on a motion supporting Ukraine (one voted against it). On
both occasions, the reason was fear of upsetting Mr Trump. Ms Meloni has since
said she will not contribute Italian troops to a peacekeeping force in Ukraine.
Her MEPs did vote for the European Commission’s new ReArm Europe programme. But
she opposes confiscating Russian assets, frozen under EU sanctions, to give to
Ukraine.
For years Ms
Meloni staunchly backed Ukraine and condemned Russia. Why the apparent
volte-face? Personal resentment may play a part. Before the new American
administration took office, Ms Meloni was touted as Europe’s “Trump-whisperer”.
She was feted by America’s president as a “fantastic woman” and invited to his
inauguration. But that was before Mr Vance bashed Europe at the Munich Security
Conference, and before Mr Trump called the EU an organisation “formed in order
to screw the United States”. Now Europe’s initiative has been snatched by
leaders prepared to take a more robust line: Sir Keir and Mr Macron, with whom
Italy’s prime minister has a thorny relationship.
A further
reason is that Ms Meloni’s coalition is split over how to react to Mr Trump.
Matteo Salvini, the leader of the hard-right League party and one of her two
deputies, has condemned ReArm Europe and calls the French president “that
madman Macron who talks of nuclear war”. Though the League has now fallen to
single digits in polls, it still commands enough votes in parliament to bring
down the government. And in a country with a strong pacifist streak, Mr Salvini
seems to have public opinion on his side. A poll this month found barely a
third of voters back higher defence spending.
Nathalie
Tocci, the head of the Istituto Affari Internazionali, a think-tank in Rome,
suggests a more troubling reason. Many originally saw Italy’s prime minister as
a toxic far-rightist. “Backing Ukraine was a way of gaining credibility, a
means to an end. But now, with a new [American] administration, it works in the
opposite direction,” she says. Italy is unlikely to join Hungary and Slovakia
among the EU’s pro-Russian Trojan horses, she says. “But nor do I expect
Giorgia Meloni to do anything that could irritate Donald Trump.”
For Ms Le
Pen the calculation is different, and not only because she is in opposition.
Unlike Ms Meloni, the French nationalist leader has never portrayed herself as
close to America. Indeed, she and her party have often shown an affinity with
Russia. In early 2022, during France’s presidential campaign, Ms Le Pen printed
flyers featuring a photo of herself and Vladimir Putin, which were hastily
shelved after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. On March 12th this year
the RN abstained in a non-binding parliamentary vote in support of Ukraine.
Until recently, such was Ms Le Pen’s scepticism about the transatlantic
alliance that she argued for France to withdraw from NATO’s military command.
This makes
it easier for Ms Le Pen to criticise Mr Trump. This month she denounced the
“brutality” of his suspension of military aid for Ukraine (since reversed),
something Hungary’s Viktor Orban would never do. In this, she is in tune with
French public opinion: in a poll conducted in March 73% of respondents said
that America is “no longer an ally” of France.
What the
party admires about Mr Trump, says a senior RN figure, is not only that he has
shown once again how nationalists can win elections. He is also a lesson in
political agency in sceptical times: that, once in office, “you can actually do
things, and fast.” This is a powerful message for Ms Le Pen’s team in a country
perennially hampered by bureaucracy and now burdened with a weak minority
government.
Leaving
early
Yet Ms Le
Pen’s party is torn. Jordan Bardella, her 29-year-old sidekick, travelled to
Washington for a recent national-conservative convention, only to quit the
event when Steve Bannon, Mr Trump’s former aide, made what looked very like a
Nazi salute. Ms Le Pen has not spent the better part of the past decade
scrubbing the image of her once-toxic party to have it tarnished again by
fascist associations. “Trump is turning into a real problem for Le Pen,” says a
French diplomat. In March her popularity dropped by two points to 34%,
according to a Cluster17 poll. (Mr Macron gained five points, to 23%.)
Mr Trump
still delights many hard-right European leaders. But for Ms Meloni and Ms Le
Pen, the American president could become a serious headache. Europeans don’t
like him: a tiny 6% of French and 8% of Italians told a poll in March that Mr
Trump is “a friend of Europe”. The more his blustering brand of nationalism
seems damaging to the continent, the more voters in Italy and France may doubt
its local versions. ■
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