Giorgia Meloni, the head of the Italian government, promises to do in Brussels what she did in Rome: send the left back into opposition and establish herself as a unifier of all the rights, from the most moderate to the most radical. In Italy, the party of the president of the council, Fratelli d’Italia, is sure to win the election organized on June 8 and 9 in the country. A success which, she hopes, will allow her to influence the balance of the next European institutions while strengthening her coalition in power in her country.
“She is keen to prove that she is capable of restoring weight to Italy in the field of foreign policy,” explains Marco Tarchi, professor at the Cesare Alfieri School of Political Sciences at the University of Florence and specialist in the European extreme right. Interview.
L’Express: Giorgia Meloni’s party should achieve a good score in the elections of June 8 and 9: what are its European ambitions?
Marco Tarchi: These are not the ones she professes when claiming to want to build a new majority within the European Parliament. It will most certainly not succeed in obtaining the results which will enable it to achieve this objective. This project would also encounter very strong opposition within the EPP [NDLR : le Parti populaire européen, rassemblant des formations de centre droite et de droite conservatrice].
Giorgia Meloni instead aims to gain greater visibility on the international scene and, consequently, also in Italian domestic politics. She is keen to prove that she is capable of restoring weight to Italy in the field of foreign policy.
Her relationship with European institutions has calmed down since she became head of government. Is this pragmatism or doublespeak?
Above all, she demonstrated pragmatism. From the start, she focused on legitimizing her role as head of government with foreign interlocutors – the EU, but also and above all NATO and the United States – to counterbalance the difficulties presented by the legacy history of his party in the context of Italian domestic politics. He is indeed accused of having preserved traces of neofascist ideology. Added to this is the distrust, even if it is not expressed in a clear form, of many representatives of transalpine institutions, starting with the President of the Republic.
On the major subjects that interest the EU: economy, war in Ukraine, immigration… How has its doctrine evolved?
On immigration, even if she moderated her tone, she maintained a firm position consistent with the one she previously supported. It could not be otherwise, because many voters would have turned to Matteo Salvini’s League.
Concerning the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, she changed sides, demonizing Vladimir Putin, in whom she previously placed great hopes. A change which can be explained by his desire to gain international credibility. In economics, it tries not to alienate the sympathies of the “strong powers” as they are called in Italy, starting with Confindustria, the association which represents employers. She thus accentuated the liberal aspects of her program.
How can we reconcile our proximity to sovereignist leaders, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in the first place, and possible support for Mario Draghi for a leading position in future European institutions?
She will present the possible appointment of Mario Draghi as a prestigious success for Italy – and therefore, by extension, for his government. In addition, Giorgia Meloni has repeatedly expressed some sympathy for the former ECB chairman and governor, stating that she has good personal relations with him.
Giorgia Meloni allied herself with the party Reconquest of Eric Zemmour in Strasbourg but at the same time she gets closer to Marine Le Pen. What is his strategy?
More than a strategy, it has a problem: that Marine Le Pen’s success eclipses hers and makes her compete for the role of leader of the right in Europe. Support for Reconquest, certainly influenced by the action of Marion Maréchal’s husband, Vincenzo Sofo, MEP for Fratelli d’Italia and former member of the League, aims more to create obstacles to the National Rally than to constitute a solid axis with a political force intended to remain for the moment in opposition in France and in Europe.
Giorgia Meloni demonstrated great closeness with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. At the same time, she participated in an event organized by the Spanish Vox and bringing together the radical rights. So what is the conservatism that she praises so much?
A syncretic conservatism, with variable geometry, held only by the aversion to progressivism. Any ally willing to confront the left head-on suits him perfectly. Unless it has an excessively extremist image, as in the case of the Germans from Alternative für Deutschland, who was even excluded from the Identity and Democracy group.
A party which further weakened the already weak hypothesis of building, as Meloni wishes, a majority bringing together the rights to govern Europe.
What alliances would allow it to have influence in Brussels ?
She doesn’t have much choice: the only interlocutor of the group she leads, that of the Conservatives and Reformists, is the European People’s Party. But even if she wanted to, she could not go so far as to demand that her party join the EPP, because many voters would not accept such an obvious detachment from the roots of Fratelli d’Italia and would be tempted to vote for the League by Matteo Salvini, who returns to the more radical strategy which guaranteed his success in the legislative elections of 2017 and European elections of 2019.
What impact will the European elections have on the Italian right? ?
It will depend on the outcome of Forza Italia [NDLR : le parti de Silvio Berlusconi, l’ancien Premier ministre italien décédé en 2023] and the League. If the first strengthens enough to defeat the second, Giorgia Meloni will have greater difficulty in asserting a leadership which leads her to claim the right to have the last word on each subject debated within her government. Forza Italia is a structurally unreliable ally, subject to the temptation to rebuild a centrist pole capable of playing on two fronts, right and left.
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