As Tensions Escalate Between Trump and Europe, Meloni Is Caught in the Middle

 

As Tensions Escalate Between Trump and Europe, Meloni Is Caught in the Middle

 

Each new crisis, whether over Ukraine or tariffs, has made the Italian prime minister’s balancing act that much harder.

 

Neil MacFarquhar Emma Bubola

By Neil MacFarquhar and Emma Bubola

Reporting from Rome

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/31/world/europe/italy-meloni-trump-europe-tensions.html

March 31, 2025, 12:01 a.m. ET

 

Amid raucous questioning by opposition members in Italy’s Parliament this month, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni noted that she had been asked repeatedly: “Are you with Europe or with the United States?”

 

The prime minister responded that she was always with Italy and by extension, Europe. “I don’t blindly follow Europe or the United States,” she said, adding, “But I’m also for the unity of the West, and I think that is necessary for both Europe and Italy.”

 

Just a couple of months ago, when President Trump was inaugurated, Ms. Meloni seemed perfectly positioned to be a bridge between him and Europe. She was the only European leader at his inauguration, matched his hostility toward liberal ideals, befriended Elon Musk and seemed eager to land the role.

 

Instead, as tensions between Europe and Washington escalate, she finds herself caught in the middle, balancing her ideological affinity with Mr. Trump with the need for Italy to help bolster the continent’s security and economy.

 

It is not clear that Mr. Trump, who is openly antagonistic toward Europe, wants a bridge. In addition, the leaders of Britain and France, both outweighing Italy as nuclear powers, have sought the role of liaison between Europe and the White House for themselves.

 

As Europe ratchets up military spending and girds for a potential trade war, Ms. Meloni continues to preach pragmatism while trying to avoid choosing sides. The balancing act could become harder to sustain.

 

Each new crisis with Mr. Trump — over a possible peace deal with Russia, over NATO, over tariffs — further underscores Ms. Meloni’s eroding middle position, analysts said.

 

“She is cleverly not taking sides until she is obliged to do it and hoping that she is never obliged to do it,” said Giovanni Orsina, the head of the political science department at Luiss Guido Carli University in Rome.

 

But he added, “If the Atlantic alliance gets into greater stress and there is a distancing between the U.S. and Europe, this position will be more difficult to hold.”

 

Once a fringe firebrand with political roots in a party born from the ashes of fascism, Ms. Meloni has cast herself as a credible leader in Europe, largely thanks to her unwavering support for Ukraine and NATO.

 

Domestically, she has thrown occasional bones to her hard-line base, including by introducing a “universal” ban on surrogacy, while simultaneously steering a conservative fiscal policy that allayed the worst fears of European leaders. Some called that pragmatism, while others accused her of “doppiezza,” Italian for “duplicity.”

 

On the international stage, Ms. Meloni has become a bundle of contradictions: an Italian nationalist seemingly in tune with Mr. Trump’s hard-right international movement leading a country whose lot is inextricably tied to the fate of Europe.

 

In the past couple of months, her main tool in not alienating either Washington or Europe was a studied silence, or when that proved impossible, anodyne calls for the West to maintain its strength through its traditional unity.

 

Now, she increasingly tries to have it both ways.

 

Ms. Meloni’s comments to the Italian Senate before a late March summit of European leaders in Brussels were some of her most extensive about the multiple controversies stirred up by Mr. Trump and his administration.

 

A staunch supporter of Ukraine, Ms. Meloni endorsed Mr. Trump’s effort to negotiate a cease-fire, calling it “a first significant step in a path that must lead to a just and lasting peace for Ukraine.”

 

But while she has upheld her commitment to providing security guarantees to Ukraine, she has been less vocally supportive of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine.

 

After he was berated by Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance in the Oval Office in early March, she did not, like other European leaders, rebuke the president and express her support for Mr. Zelensky. Instead, Ms. Meloni responded to the fiery exchange by calling for a U.S.-Europe summit. No such meeting occurred.

 

She has criticized the response of some European leaders to the Trump administration as “a bit too political” and suggested that it is “childish” to expect Italy to have to chose between Europe and the United States. While Italy would gladly help Europe avoid a confrontation, she said in an interview with The Financial Times published on Friday: “I’m not interested in saying, ‘I’m the one in the middle, I’m a protagonist.’ Not now. The stakes are too high.”

 

Unlike France and Britain, which have led the effort to organize a European force for Ukraine, Italy rejected the idea of deploying its troops.

 

As Mr. Trump threatens to withdraw the U.S. commitment to Europe, Italy has largely backed the idea that Europe must invest in rearming. Although Ms. Meloni has described the United States as Italy’s closest ally, Rome’s relatively low military spending might create friction with Mr. Trump. It falls below the 2 percent of gross domestic product required by NATO guidelines, not to mention the 5 percent pushed by Washington. One of her coalition partners adamantly opposes any increase.

 

On tariffs, Ms. Meloni has called for moderation and negotiation. She warned that retaliatory tariffs could set off a “vicious circle” in which everyone loses, driving up inflation and restricting economic growth.

 

“I am convinced that we need to work concretely and with pragmatism to find common ground and avoid a trade war that would not benefit anyone,” Ms. Meloni said in Parliament.

 

For now, Ms. Meloni’s relations with Mr. Trump and his team seem good, even if no White House visit has been announced.

 

Mr. Trump praised Ms. Meloni in late February, calling her “a wonderful woman” and noting that “Italy has got very strong leadership.” Ms. Meloni reposted Mr. Trump’s comments on X.

 

In turn, she has lauded both Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance, as she did in a live address by video at the annual CPAC conference near Washington, where she has been a regular speaker for years. She underscored their shared political agenda and characterized Mr. Trump’s re-election as a major development in the rise of global conservatism.

 

How long her balancing act can last is the question dogging her.

 

 

In the seaside town of Viareggio, Italy, the spectacular annual carnival parade is famous for political satire. This year one float featured a 50-foot statue of the prime minister. The float’s creator, Alessandro Avanzini, had dressed the figure of Ms. Meloni in a pink suit jacket, swaying inside a pair of oversize gray jodhpurs of the kind once favored by the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

 

Mr. Avanzini said that he had left it deliberately unclear whether Ms. Meloni was donning the jodhpurs or shedding them. Various spectators said that accurately reflected the current political discussion in Italy surrounding the ambiguity at which the prime minister excels.

 

“She is very clever at understanding when she has to wear them,” said Stefania Giusti, 48, an agricultural project manager.

 

“When she is meeting Trump, she puts them on, but when she goes to Brussels, she takes them off,” Ms. Giusti said. “But I do not think that she can go on like this for long.”

 

Elizabeth Djinis and Virginia DiGaetano contributed reporting.

 

Neil MacFarquhar has been a Times reporter since 1995, writing about a range of topics from war to politics to the arts, both internationally and in the United States. More about Neil MacFarquhar

 

Emma Bubola is a Times reporter based in Rome. More about Emma Bubola