Can Giorgia Meloni, queen of Europe’s right wing, take back her crown?
The Italian prime minister’s status has fallen since being sidelined in Brussels. Can she get her mojo back?
It was past midnight in Brussels when Giorgia Meloni emerged from a meeting of European Union leaders to vent her disgust at being sidelined.
The meeting on June 27 followed get-togethers organised behind her back by the French and German leaders to agree a slate of candidates for the “big three” jobs in the EU: president of the commission, president of the council and high representative for foreign affairs.
After she was given the list, Meloni voted against two of them and abstained on backing Ursula von der Leyen for another five years as commission chief.
“There was not even the slightest debate about the line to take after elections in which citizens asked the EU to take a new and different direction,” she told reporters that night. “This has been a big mistake, above all a lack of respect for citizens.”
In the end, an alliance of conservatives, liberals, socialists and greens in the European parliament was enough to give Von der Leyen a second term.
The Italian prime minister was the first to admit she had been marginalised, raising the question: How did Europe’s rising star stumble, and how can she get her mojo back?
“Giorgia Meloni wanted to be inside the tent and instead got stitched up,” said Simon Hix, a professor of comparative politics at the European University Institute in Florence.
“Von der Leyen had to choose between courting Meloni or the greens, but if she had picked Meloni she would have lost the European socialists.”
Before last month’s European elections, Meloni was grabbing the headlines, feted as the charming, witty, hard-right leader of a stable Italian government who had moved beyond her party’s fascist heritage. She was equally at ease with Von der Leyen, seen by many in Italy as the epitome of EU arrogance, as she was with Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister and an outspoken Eurosceptic.
Antonio Polito, a commentator with the Corriere della Sera newspaper, said of the horsetrading that followed right-wing parties’ success at the poll: “She had a magic moment when she could have been the new Angela Merkel, but it didn’t happen. Macron and Scholz closed the deal with the European centre-right EPP [European People’s Party] group of parties … didn’t let Meloni get in the game.”
Giovanni Orsina, a political expert at Luiss University in Rome, said Meloni should have swallowed her pride and backed Von der Leyen.
“Macron and Scholz decided Meloni was the target and put her in a corner. But when you’re in a corner you don’t complain, you counter-attack,” he said.
“Instead she played defensively. She should have voted for Von der Leyen on the grounds she was a right-wing candidate and promised to back the policies she liked. Meloni didn’t play this well and now she’s weaker.”
After last week’s vote giving Von der Leyen another term, Meloni told Corriere della Sera: “I said my party would not have formed a majority with the left of any kind, and I didn’t.”
The problem is that after Meloni spent two years cultivating Von der Leyen, spurning her now looks “confusing”, said Lorenzo Pregliasco, founding partner of the polling firm You Trend. “It’s strange to build a conciliatory image with the EU and then sacrifice it.”
To her right, Meloni is overshadowed by the Patriots, an EU parliament grouping including Orban, the Spanish Vox party she was once allied with, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally and her own coalition partner, Matteo Salvini.
Polito said: “As head of the Italian government she could not back Orban, yet as the aspiring head of the European right she could not back Von der Leyen. If Trump wins, Meloni will have an even harder time bridging those two roles.”
There was a hint this week that Meloni will get a rougher ride in Brussels when Vera Jourova, a European Commission vice-president, called on her to safeguard press freedoms after her government was accused of censoring state media. This is politics, though, and grudges and principles give way fast to doing business.
Meloni and Von der Leyen may be better off not tied to each other. The commission president can now pursue anti-migrant policies without appearing to do Meloni favours, and Meloni can work with Von der Leyen when she wants while hammering away at the EU’s green deal, blamed for raising energy prices and harming agriculture.
“Meloni possibly agreed with Von der Leyen not to vote for her, saying, ‘You have the votes, you’re OK. By not voting for you I won’t create problems for you or for me,’” Orsina said.
“Now it’s Von der Leyen’s bloc, the European People’s Party, which will have a problem telling its voters in Germany, from farmers to car makers, that they are again allied with the greens.”
Hix said: “Coalitions evolve at the EU. The pro-green alliance unravelled in the last parliament and with Meloni, the EPP has an alternative ally if it needs it. And that gives Meloni power.”
The Times
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