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“There will be surprises”, announced Giorgia Meloni regarding the new European Union summits, it is not known whether to hope for them or to keep them reserved for the ongoing negotiations. What is certain is that the major maneuvers in the Strasbourg Parliament have in the meantime recorded an overtaking: the conservative group led by the leader of the Italian right has overtaken Emmanuel Macron’s liberals, becoming the third largest component after those of the People’s Party and the Socialists.
But this cannot be the “surprise” evoked or invoked, also because the formal deadline for establishing groups in the European Parliament is set for 15 July and negotiations are in full swing in all directions. Including that of the difficult unification between Giorgia Meloni’s conservatives and Marine Le Pen’s identitarians, that is, the entire anti-progressive galaxy under the same roof, moderates and radicals, right-wing governments and extreme right-wingers against their governments. Hypothesis which would lead the Meloni-Le Pen group to overtake the socialists, and which could strengthen in the wake of the vote in France next Sunday, with the Lepenists favored in the polls.
But politics does not live by arithmetic alone. It will be the European Council of 27 and 28 June, just on the eve of the French vote, that will have to find agreement on the 4 EU summits – starting with the President of the Commission -, on the commissioners of the 27 Nations, but above all on the competences to be entrusted to each one.
Our country, as Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani has already declared, “is entitled to a vice-presidency of the Commission and a Serie A commissioner”.
Here is the surprise that Giorgia Meloni is betting on: making Italy, the continent’s third largest economy, one of the six founding countries of the EU and one of the seven G7 powers, count in Brussels again.
Too often the fractious Italian politics and the 68 governments that have followed one another in 78 years have failed to assert the weight and value of Italy.
Europe was seen and experienced, by Rome, not as a great opportunity and projection of Italy, but rather as a distant and bureaucratic hindrance, and therefore important European positions were snubbed. Except for a chorus of complaints if Brussels does not take the issue of immigration to heart or issues directives that penalize national industry or Italian real estate, in a country where eight out of ten citizens are homeowners.
Anti-Europeanism in Italy is the result of the lack of political commitment made in Europe. How many times have Italian ministers been absent or silent at the time of decisive choices.
On this, therefore, much more than on support for the possible encore of Ursula von der Leyen as President of the Commission with a reconfirmed majority among popular, socialists and liberals, the Italian government stakes its credibility. And Giorgia Meloni her ability to have an impact or not in the new Europe.
Published in L’Arena di Verona, Bresciaoggi and Gazzetta di Mantova
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