What
happens if Italy and France’s right-wing firebrands unite?
Once in
office, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni moderated her positions. Will Marine Le Pen do
the same?
By GIORGIO
LEALI
in Paris
Photo-illustrations
by Matthieu Bourel for POLITICO
JULY 5, 2024
4:00 AM CET
The last two
times Marine Le Pen ran for president, French voters judged her far-right
policies so toxic they came together from all other sides of the political
spectrum to keep her out of office.
This week,
her National Rally party took a major stride toward taking power, coming in
first in a national election for the first time in its history. On Sunday, in
the first round of a parliamentary election, the party raked in more than 33
percent of the vote, well ahead of a broad leftist alliance and French
President Emmanuel Macron’s Ensemble party.
The result
promises to plunge France into political and economic turmoil. Once again, the
country’s other parties are expected to ask their voters to band together to
prevent the National Rally from achieving a majority. The most likely outcome
of the second-round vote on July 7 is a hung parliament — but a government run
by Le Pen’s 28-year-old protégé Jordan Bardella cannot be excluded.
The National
Rally’s strong performance also opens the possibility that Le Pen — who has
campaigned on distancing herself from NATO and the EU and pledged better
relations with Russia — could finally make a successful run for president in
2027, sending a shockwave across the Western world.
For the
establishment in Paris and Brussels, the burning question is whether Le Pen
really means what she says. In Italy, Giorgia Meloni — a right-wing firebrand
who became prime minister in 2022 — has reshaped herself as a constructive
conservative leader, supporting Ukraine and working closely with European
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
Were Le Pen
to be elected president of France, the world’s seventh-largest economy and a
nuclear power, could she be counted upon to make a similar metamorphosis, a
process the French press has dubbed mélonisation? Or would she more likely aim
her newly acquired power at the twin pillars of the European political order?
From Benito
to Ursula: Meloni’s neo-fascist roots
Before she
became prime minister, there was little in Meloni’s biography that indicated
she would be feted by U.S. President Joe Biden and wooed by some of the most
important figures in Brussels.
The Italian
leader got her start in politics at the age of 15 when she joined the youth
section of a neo-fascist political party whose symbol was the tricolor flame
and which was founded after World War II by a chief of staff in Benito
Mussolini’s last government. She was a teenage activist when, in a now-famous
recording, she said that the Italian dictator had been “a good politician.”
After being
elected to parliament in 2006, she was plucked by Silvio Berlusconi to serve as
Italy’s youngest minister since the end of World War II. After that government
fell in 2011, Meloni founded the far-right Brothers of Italy party, choosing
the tricolor flame as its symbol.
She spent
most of the next decade in the political wilderness, building a following with
hard-right rhetoric on immigration and LGBTQ+ rights and frequent attacks on
Brussels, Berlin and Paris. But while she celebrated Vladimir Putin’s 2018
election victory as representing “the unequivocal will of the Russian people,”
she pivoted after the invasion of Ukraine, becoming one of the Russian
president’s loudest opponents before becoming prime minister in 2022.
“She
changed, but she is loyal to the tricolor flame, there’s a certain fidelity to
neofascism,” said Marc Lazar, an expert of Franco-Italian politics at Sciences
Po and Luiss universities. Nonetheless, Meloni has worked closely with NATO and
the EU, he added.
By contrast,
Le Pen has spent years trying to moderate her image. After taking over her
party from her father — Jean-Marie Le Pen, a holocaust denier who once
dismissed the Nazi gas chambers as a “detail” in the history of World War II —
she launched a process of de-demonization, sanding off the party’s harder
edges.
That
included ejecting her father from the party in 2015, giving it a new name and
recruiting Bardella as the National Rally’s respectable face. What Le Pen
didn’t do however was turn down the heat on NATO and the EU. While she
backtracked on earlier calls to leave the EU or its common currency area, she
has made no secret of her disdain for Brussels and her desire to clip the
Commission’s powers.
Le Pen’s
2022 presidential platform included calls for France to exit NATO’s integrated
military command. And while she has condemned the war in Ukraine, her party has
abstained on key votes in France and in the European Parliament for support for
Kyiv. A 2023 French parliamentary report accused the National Rally of serving
as a mouthpiece for the Kremlin.
Le Pen’s
de-demonization
As it has
crept closer to power, however, the National Rally has sought to downplay some
of its more radical pledges.
In the
walkup to this week’s election, Le Pen’s party hinted it would likely backtrack
on some of its more lavish spending plans, including a pledge to bring down the
retirement age to 60.
The party
has also quietly removed part of its defense policy from its website, deleting
sections that proposed deepening diplomatic ties with Russia, halting
cooperation projects with Germany and exiting NATO’s integrated military
command. Bardella now describes Russia as “a multi-dimensional threat both for
France and Europe.”
Speaking to
POLITICO in March, Bardella said that though the National Rally still wanted to
leave NATO’s integrated command, it would only do so after the war in Ukraine
was over. “You don’t change treaties in wartime,” Bardella said.
“Le Pen
clearly put some water in her wine,” said Thierry Chopin, an expert at the
Jacques Delors Institute and a professor at the College of Europe, though he
added the National Rally still holds what he described as some “radical
positions,” such as the belief that French law should have primacy over EU
rules.
Some have
interpreted Le Pen’s repositioning as an indication that the French far-right
leader plans to follow Meloni’s lead and work with the EU and NATO rather than
against them.
“You can
draw a parallel with the Meloni government,” said Francesco Saraceno, an
economics professor at Sciences Po Paris. “The economy and relations with
Europe are the files on which Meloni has least marked territory because in fact
there are constraints that are difficult to get around.”
A French
business executive who was granted anonymity to speak candidly said that
entrepreneurs in the country were more scared by the possibility of a
government led by the left-wing New Popular Front than Le Pen’s National Rally.
“If she
wants a serious shot at the 2027 election, she needs to show that she can be a
politician that delivers,” said a Brussels-based diplomat from an EU country,
noting that Le Pen would have to choose between following Meloni’s example or
playing a more hostile role as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has done.
“If you want
to be a politician that delivers, you can’t go right against the EU,” the
diplomat said.
‘Le Pen is
the exact opposite of Meloni’
So, does
Meloni’s example mean the Western establishment can breathe easy?
Probably
not.
Whatever
their posture on the international stage, neither leader has softened their
position at home. Le Pen continues to advocate stripping social benefits from
the parents of minors convicted of crimes and has called for a ban on people
with multiple citizenships from holding top jobs in the public administration.
Some of her candidates to the French parliament have been revealed to have made
racist and anti-Semitic comments.
Meloni has
also stuck to some of her most conservative positions, tabling legislation that
would allow anti-abortion activists a place inside clinics that provide the
procedure. Leaders from her party’s youth wing were filmed making antisemitic
comments and boasting of being fascist, Nazi and racist.
On foreign
policy and European affairs, Le Pen would have more room to maneuver than
Meloni, who as the leader of a coalition government has to coordinate with her
partners.
Ahead of
last Sunday’s vote, Le Pen vowed to challenge Macron on foreign policy —
traditionally the prerogative of the president — should her party gain a
majority in parliament. Macron, she said, would be prevented from sending
military trainers to help Ukraine. “On Ukraine, the president will not be able
to send troops,” Le Pen said in an interview with the daily Le Télégramme.
“Le Pen is
the exact opposite of Meloni,” said Benjamin Haddad, an outgoing MP from
Macron’s party who is running for reelection. “She has refused all forms of
support for Ukraine, had NATO withdrawal on her agenda and is pro-Russian. Her
vision would weaken France and Europe at a time of war on our continent.”
While both
Italy and France are heavily indebted countries, France’s size and its pivotal
role in all EU files would give Le Pen more leverage with Brussels. “France is
a stronger country than Italy and is less dependent on Europe so there could be
a few more shake-ups,” added Saraceno, the economist.
Philippe
Olivier, Le Pen’s brother-in-law and close adviser argued that while Rome is
too dependent on EU funds to pick a fight with Brussels, Paris would face far
fewer constraints. “Italy is not in the same economic situation as France … we
have more leeway to bend Brussels,” said Olivier, who was reelected to the
European Parliament in June. “Since we are la France we are more free, we are
not enslaved,” he added.
Given the
strength of her rhetoric, Le Pen would also come under pressure from her
supporters to deliver on some of her radical promises. “It is a more
complicated turn,” said Lazar, the expert on Franco-Italian politics. “Giving
up on her position would cost her consensus and would disappoint a part of her
Euroskeptic voters.”
Far-right
team up
Then there’s
the fact that Le Pen wouldn’t be alone in her positions — and neither would
Meloni.
So far the
Italian has elected to keep Le Pen at arm’s length. Asked ahead of France’s
2022 presidential election whether she preferred Le Pen to Macron, Meloni
answered she didn’t feel represented by either. She has also rebuffed a
proposal by Le Pen to team up ahead of last month’s European Parliament
election.
But it’s one
thing to spur a politically toxic opposition figure, especially when you’re
isolated yourself. It’s another to be confronted with a potentially like-minded
president of the EU’s second-largest economy.
On Monday,
Meloni congratulated Le Pen on her victory in the first round of the election
and endorsed her party for next Sunday’s run-off vote. France, she noted, is a
highly polarized country, and “obviously, I prefer the right.”
During a
meeting of the European Council last month, the Italian leader was reportedly
furious about being shut out of the debate over the next crop of EU leaders,
joining Hungary’s Orbán in opposition to the decision.
By
themselves, there was little Meloni and Orbán could accomplish. With Le Pen at
the table, the outcome could have been different.
When it
comes to Le Pen and Meloni, the better question might not be whether one will
act like the other. It’s how both would act were they to find themselves in
power together.
“It will be
another story if the National Rally wins the presidential election in 2027 and
obtains an absolute majority in the National Assembly,” predicted Chopin, the
political scientist. “In that case, there is a real risk of adopting a much
more radical and confrontational attitude.”
Clea
Caulcutt contributed reporting.
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