Giorgia Meloni has won her bet. Despite a historically low turnout of 49.6%, the Italian prime minister emerged stronger in both Rome and Brussels at the end of the EU elections, which closed on the evening of Sunday, June 9. With 28.9% of the vote, according to projections still incomplete as of Monday morning, her party, Fratelli d’Italia (national-conservative) has surpassed the 26% recorded in the 2022 legislative elections. Meloni has asserted herself as the head of the most stable government among major European countries, following the fall of the majorities in power in Paris and Berlin.
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Her party now intends to engage in dialogue with France’s far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party to form majorities in the European Parliament on certain texts and they are hoping for a far-right victory in Paris after the early legislative elections announced on Sunday. “A government different from Macron’s would inevitably be good news,” said Italian Minister of Agriculture Francesco Lollobrigida, who is very close to Meloni, when interviewed by Le Monde.
“They saw us coming, they didn’t stop us!” exulted the Italian prime minister in a brief address to supporters gathered at Fratelli d’Italia’s campaign headquarters on Sunday night. Meloni decided to make her campaign very personal, taking the lead on her party’s lists in every constituency in the country and asking voters only to put her first name on ballot papers. Fratelli d’Italia’s victory is, therefore, a personal one.
Marginal in 2019 with a score of 6.4% and five elected members, Meloni’s party will enter the new legislature in a strong position within the European Conservatives and Reformists group (ECR), a movement led by the prime minister. In the months leading up to the vote, Meloni had oscillated between emphasizing a close relationship with outgoing European Commission president and re-election candidate Ursula von der Leyen of the center-right European People’s Party (EPP), and making a succession of gestures to Marine Le Pen and the RN.
‘Italian model’
“Macron supports everything we oppose, so a change in Paris with the Rassemblement National would be very positive,” observed Lucio Malan, president of the Fratelli d’Italia group in the Italian Senate. “There is a real willingness on our part to talk with the Rassemblement National to establish a fruitful collaboration. We agree with Marine Le Pen on practically every issue, and we can envisage building majorities together, text by text, with other right-wing parties.”
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Publish date : 2024-06-10 15:29:28
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