The recent European elections were a cataclysm for the main countries of the continent, and no government emerged unscathed. The most sensational result is that of France, where President Macron’s party was overwhelmed by the far right of Marine Le Pen and the young leader Jordan Bardella, who won the absolute majority. In Germany, President Scholz’s socialist party came third, overtaken not only by the CDU-CSU (the never-tame German Christian Democrats), but also by the far-right Alternative für Deutschland, which is growing rapidly.
Even in Spain, the socialist party of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez was defeated by the opposition People’s Party. Only in Italy did the government forces all grow, Prime Minister Meloni’s Brothers of Italy came close to 30%, Forza Italia and the League each came close to 10%, overall it was a great success for the centre-right government in two years of his settlement.
Just think, our little Italy, once derided as a land of instability, is today the most stable element in the entire European Union, and this is fundamental in a time of global upheavals, as we are also seeing in the G7 hosted in these right from Italy. After the results, the question of who will be the new president of the Commission these days is the first issue on which the 27 governments and Parliament itself will have to measure themselves and decide. Going by the numbers alone, which in politics are a lot but are not everything, Ursula von der Leyen could be reconfirmed, with the same majority as the last legislature, popular, socialists and liberals.
But is it politically wise to ignore the undoubted progress of the right (some extreme, some more moderate)? The voters showed with their vote a certain dissatisfaction with the old formulas, and with their vote for the conservatives and the right they wanted to indicate a new direction.
I repeat, the old political majority still has the numbers, but ignoring the weight of the new protagonists would not, in my opinion, be the wisest choice. So? Why not think about involving Meloni’s party, which is right-wing but far from extremist, in the European majority? The leaders of the 27 will decide at the next summit, but if they took this advice into consideration I think they would do the right thing.
