Analysis
Giorgia Meloni has emerged as a kingmaker for the
EU – but will she turn to centre right or far right?
Jon Henley
Europe
correspondent
Even her toughest opponents admit she’s played it
cleverly. Yet the long-term aims of Italy’s prime minister remain unclear
Sun 2 Jun
2024 06.00 CEST
When she
became Italy’s prime minister in October 2022, Giorgia Meloni looked like
Brussels’ worst nightmare. Until then, the fiery leader of the Brothers of
Italy – a party with neofascist roots – had seemed anything but EU-friendly.
For years,
railing against the bloc had been Meloni’s stock in trade: the euro amounted to
enslavement, the European Commission was effectively a loan shark. “Bring down
this EU!” she urged the 2019 conservative CPAC conference in the US.
As she took
up office in the Palazzo Chigi, far-right parties across Europe hailed her
victory, expecting the new leader in Rome to promote their nationalist agenda
and join the likes of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán in battling Brussels bureaucracy.
To the
surprise of many, she didn’t. Italy’s new prime minister has proved, at least
superficially, to be a constructive European, partly because Italy needed
billions in post-Covid EU recovery funds, and partly (perhaps) because Meloni
is playing a longer game.
After
European elections next weekend that are likely to see considerably more
national-conservative and far-right MEPs in the parliament, her influence – in
the assembly, and potentially over the executive – could be a lot greater.
Courted by
both the resurgent, if deeply divided, hard right and by the centre-right
commission president Ursula von der Leyen, Meloni has emerged as a possible
kingmaker who could end up swaying the EU’s direction on several key issues.
Even
opponents admit she has played it cleverly. Her first foreign visit as prime
minister was to Brussels, where she engaged positively. Since then, she has
been instrumental in securing a long-awaited deal on the reform of EU asylum
rules. She travelled with Von der Leyen on three occasions to north Africa,
signing deals with Egypt and Tunisia to help slow migrant departures.
Meloni has
talked openly about ‘changing the European picture’ and ‘building a different
majority in the parliament’
Crucially,
Meloni has also offered constant support for Ukraine and unstinting criticism
of Russia. That alone marked her out from the likes of France’s Marine Le Pen
and other far-right figures who traditionally have been Moscow-friendly. And
she has been invaluable in helping get Hungary on board, becoming known as “the
Orbán whisperer”.
All that
has enamoured her to Von der Leyen, who, given the expected rise in the hard
right’s representation in parliament, may well need the votes of some of them
to secure her second five-year term.
Von der
Leyen’s centre-right European People’s party (EPP) should remain the largest in
parliament, followed by the centre-left Socialists & Democrats and liberal
Renew group, but not all MEPs from that grand mainstream coalition will back
her.
She has
repeatedly ruled out working with some radical right parties, such as Le Pen’s
National Rally, Geert Wilders’s Dutch Freedom party or Austria’s FPÖ, all of
which sit in the parliament’s far-right Identity and Democracy group. But she
is relaxed about working with Meloni and some fellow members of the rival, more
normalised European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR). “I’ve been working very
well with Giorgia Meloni”, who is “clearly pro-European”, Von der Leyen has
said.
That has
led the socialists, liberals and greens, who fear Meloni could demand a
watering-down of EU climate measures in exchange for support, to warn they will
torpedo Von der Leyen’s reappointment if she cuts any far-right deals.
The
commission chief, then, may face a choice. But so will Meloni. For two years,
she has been a model of respectability on the EU stage, while pursuing her
culture wars – against independent journalism, same-sex parents and LGBTQ+
rights – at home. As one EU diplomat put it, Meloni “may have shown herself to
be a pragmatist, but she’s a conviction politician – and her politics are still
hard right”.
As if to
underline that fact, she spoke (online) at a “great patriotic convention” in
Madrid last month.
Le Pen,
subsequently backed by Orbán, last week called on Italy’s prime minister to
unite Europe’s nationalist and far-right forces in a parliamentary
“supergroup”. Given their intense factional rivalries, notably over Ukraine,
that is very unlikely.
But some
constellation of parties from the national-conservative ECR that might be
palatable to much of Von der Leyen’s centre-right EPP is certainly imaginable,
at least on some big issues, and such a constellation would clearly be led by
Meloni. So far, she has kept her powder dry, refusing to speculate on an
alliance with Von der Leyen or Le Pen, but she has talked openly about
“changing the European picture” and “building a different majority in the
European parliament”.
If she can
successfully build a bridge between Europe’s conservatives and at least part of
its hard right, Meloni could effect quite a radical change in the EU’s
direction – on issues as vital as climate change, enlargement and immigration. Maybe that’s her plan.
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