Giorgia Meloni: The Unexpected Bridge in European Politics

“Meloni has been clever,” said Daniele Albertazzi, politics professor at Britain’s Surrey University. “What she’s done is to say: ‘Look, let’s be mainstream and responsible on the international stage because I need these guys’.” One senior EU leader, speaking strictly off the record, said Meloni remained a “radical right-winger” but had adopted a pro-European attitude because Italy was heavily indebted and could not antagonise nations that provided Rome with financial cover.

Whatever her motivations, Meloni has proved invaluable in recent summits, helping to persuade the often recalcitrant Hungarian nationalist leader, Viktor Orban, to let through a funding package for Ukraine and to back the EU migration pact. One EU official, who declined to be named, said the Commission largely communicated with the Hungarian leader via Meloni, earning her the nickname “the Orban whisperer”.

DIVISIONS ABIDE Europe’s far-right and nationalist parties often share similar policy platforms, but are divided into two distinct blocs within the EU parliament.

Meloni is head of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, which includes Poland’s Law and Justice (PiS) party. Salvini and Le Pen are in the Identity and Democracy (ID) bloc, while Orban’s Fidesz party is homeless for now. Von der Leyen comes from the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) – the largest single EU political grouping.

Meloni ruled out supporting von der Leyen in 2019, but has not been drawn this time around. Party officials told Reuters that Italy might support her reappointment in June as part of a deal that included a top job for Italy in the new Commission. Although Meloni is the leading force in the ECR, she would be unlikely to bring the whole group into line, underscoring the intersecting rivalries that criss-cross European politics.

PiS lawmakers, for example, would almost certainly refuse to back von der Leyen because their domestic foe, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, is a driving force in von der Leyen’s EPP. “Von der Leyen and Donald Tusk are politicians from a bygone era who should have no more influence on European politics,” PiS European lawmaker Zdzisław Krasnodębski told Reuters.

Meloni has also ruled out merging her ECR group with ID, which recently ditched its most radical partner, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, hoping instead that her bloc will grow at the ballot box to give her more leverage in Brussels. “Having a more significant parliamentary group would allow Meloni to be at the centre between ID and the EPP. For me, that is her goal,” said Arturo Varvelli, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations in Rome.