What is the difference between powder and reality? The news of theseparation of Matteo Salvini’s League and Marine Le Pen’s National Rassemblement from the German nationalists of the AfD contains an element of important interest and an element of sensational hypocrisy. The element of interest, which we reported yesterday in our newspaper, concerns the attempt by Salvini and Le Pen to demonstrate that their political subjects have no intention of being sucked into a dangerous extremist spiral in Europe. The calculation itself is important. In 2019, populist parties saw extremism as a key to trying to win votes in Europe. Today, the same populist parties that won plenty of votes five years ago by playing with the worst anti-system instincts are trying to present themselves on the public scene with a slightly different, cleaned up, powdered profile. Le Pen’s no to the AfD comes after the support for Ukraine surprisingly expressed by the same party a few weeks ago (a party which, like the League in the past, has had more than opaque relations with the Putin world).
The attempt of the nationalist right parties is clear and coincides with the same game plan that Giorgia Meloni has in mind: making credible the hypothesis that after June 9th there could be a right-wing government majority capable of dealing the cards in Europecapable of replicating in Brussels the same magical balance that the right has found in Italy and above all capable of oust the Socialist Party from the control room. Polls say that, at the moment, the seats that all the right-wing and centre-right parties that will sit in Europe in the next legislature could take make the scenario evoked by Meloni, Salvini, Le Pen, Orbán is credible. The majority needed to give the cards to the European Parliament is equal to 361 deputies and all the right-wing parties, including the AfD, currently hover, according to the latest projections, at around 353. The polls photograph the numbers but do not give a clear picture reality. And the reason why the great alliance of the European right is a fake hypothesisas Paola Peduzzi and Micol Flammini explain well today on Euporn, is linked to three factors.
The first factor is political: the EPP has already said that governing with Marine Le Pen (and with Orbán) is impossible.
The second factor is strategic: imagining that the European Commission of the future can do without a strategic agreement between political groups that govern in Spain and Germany (PSE) and in France (Renew) is simply unthinkable.
The third factor is the most unmentionable and concerns a topic that should be close to the hearts of the parties of the Italian right: but we are sure that to a country like Italyand to the parties that are in government, agree hope that there will be a round and clear triumph of the European right and that there will be a broad alliance of the European People’s Party with the nationalist parties?
Put more bluntly: Is it really enough for parties like the League and the Rassemblement National to give themselves a touch of powder by sending the AfD to hell for being less dangerous parties?
The assessment of whether parties are dangerous, in this case, is not general, how anti-European they are, how xenophobic they are, how illiberal they are, how conspiracy theorists they are, how Trumpian they are, how obscurantist they are, but it is specific and concerns a problem that whoever governs Italy should have a clear idea. If you look carefully at the agendas brought to Europe by the sovereignist, nationalist and Eurosceptic parties, i.e. most of the parties with which Meloni and Salvini are allied in Europe, you will easily understand that the national interest of our country, of Italy, is inversely proportional to the political demands promoted in Europe by these parties.
The grim international of Euroscepticism is against working to have greater solidarity in Europe regarding migrants, which Italy is instead asking for. She is against extending solidarity projects such as Next Generation Eu. She is against working on a single European market. She is against working to have more opportunities to leverage the common European debt. It is against having European armies work together in concert to create a common defense. She is against increasing free trade agreements in the world, which would instead be convenient for exporting countries like Italy. It is against the option of not replicating the tariff policy pursued by America against China. And finally, it is against interpreting in the most flexible way possible the rules for recovering from excessive deficits in highly indebted countries such as Italy.
The nationalist right, around Europe, tries in every way to clean itself up, when it has the opportunity, but what the governing right, starting with Meloni, should urgently understand is that for a country like Italy to hope for a Europe governed by a hard right, with little solidarity, inflexible on accounts, unwilling to bet on a new form of European sovereignty, is a pose similar to the one assumed by the legendary Tafazzi when he caressed his family jewels with a mallet.
Right-wing government in Europe can be a good way not to say that during the election campaign after June 9th it will be up to govern with socialist enemies. But the truth that Meloni cannot say is that today having to choose whether to govern with the rigorist right or whether to govern with supportive socialists there would be no choice: in Europe it is better to be with dear Elly than with the fearsome Marine.
