“Ursula and Giorgia are fake candidates”
For Renew Europe, Ursula von der Leyen’s openness to a possible collaboration with the ECR in the European Parliament after the elections “is not acceptable” and the Liberals will never make “political and programmatic alliances” with right-wing “extremists” like the European Conservatives and Reformists. Sandro Gozi, one of Renew’s three leading candidates, secretary of the European Democratic Party and MEP, elected in France with Renaissance, told Adnkronos after yesterday’s first debate between the Spitzenkandidaten in Maastricht. Von der Leyen, observes Gozi, “is already a fake candidate: on this she has one thing in common with Giorgia Meloni, because she wants to be president of the Commission and doesn’t show up anywhere, while Meloni doesn’t want to do anything, but presents everywhere. So certainly, due to fictions and mockery of the voters, Giorgia and Ursula are very close.” “Ursula’s new fiction – he continues – is to make a distinction between the right-wing extremists of the League, the AfD and the Rassemblement National and the right-wing extremists of Fratelli d’Italia, Vox and Eric Zemmour. They are extremists: whether they are in one, two, three or ten groups, we with the ECR, Meloni, Id, Le Pen, will not make any political alliance. This applies to yesterday, today and tomorrow. ”. (continued)
For Gozi, “the more von der Leyen goes towards the far right, the further he moves away from Renew”. Of course, he continues, “it’s not like we can stop someone from voting for the next president of the Commission. We cannot prevent Meloni from doing the right thing every now and then, but we political and programmatic alliances, a legislative political program, with common objectives, as we did in 2019, with Ecr, Meloni, Fazzolari and other extremists of the kind, do not we do. We didn’t do it in 2019 with the Polish Pis, we won’t do it in 2024 with Meloni.”
And this, he specifies, “not out of prejudice, but because, simply, we have profoundly different visions of Europe: Meloni herself said it clearly in Pescara, which is incompatible with us at Renew”. In 2019, you recall, the Polish Pis “voted for the president of the Commission (von der Leyen, ed.), because they had a commissioner (for Agriculture, Janusz Wojciechowski, ed.). In my opinion, the more von der Leyen goes towards the extremists, the more she distances herself from the possibility of succeeding herself.” Finally, the calendar. The confirmation vote of the next president (or presidents) of the Commission could be held in September, calendar in hand.
“It hasn’t been decided yet – explains Gozi – it’s tight in July, but we will decide after the elections. Of course, voting in July would require a second special session, in the second half of the month. If we don’t have a special session in July, we will have to wait until September. But the question is still open,” he concludes.
