EU summit without Meloni, the prime minister angry: “Now nothing is taken for granted”

Behind the scenes, Giorgia Meloni is very annoyed by the decision to formalize the renewal of the European positions before tomorrow’s public appointment. And wait for a clarification with Von der Leyen

BOLOGNA – The agreement for the renewal of positions in Europe was reached without Giorgia Meloni. And although they offered Italy the role of vice-presidency with delegation to the Pnrr (which would go to the very loyal Raffaele Fitto), the prime minister would not have taken the exclusion well and would be waiting for a clarification with Ursula Von der Leyen. And he could abstain, tomorrow 27 June, from voting for the next European Commission. To go in order, things went like this: agreement was reached on the three names at the top of the European institutions, with Ursula von dei Leyen at the head of the EU executive, the Portuguese socialist Antonio Costa at the helm of the Council and the liberal Kaja Kallas High Representative for Foreign Policy. But Giorgia Meloni would not have made the decision well make these choices official after a summit in which she did not participate and before an important (and everyone’s) public event at a European level, like tomorrow’s. And it wouldn’t have been enough to reassure her, Von der Leyen’s phone call who confirmed her position as vice-president for Italy yesterday afternoon. The summit in which the decisions would have been taken would have been attended by German Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakise, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron, and the outgoing Dutch Prime Minister, Mark Rutte)

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As Corriere della Sera writes, Meloni would have preferred to wait for “the summit which opens tomorrow to make the decision official“. And the prime minister’s tone would be somewhat polemical: “They could have had more respect for a founding country of the Union, they decided to move on without us, at this point nothing is taken for granted anymore, not even the parliamentary support of the ECR group for a second mandate for Ursula von der Leyen”. And now? It is not excluded that, out of spite, Meloni will choose for tomorrow’s match the line of abstention. Which would be quite exceptional and a strong signal. But the climate of tension could even put everything back into questionincluding Fitto’s possible vice-presidency.