Bringing back results – Euractiv

As EU leaders begin talks in BrusselsItalian Prime Minister Giorgia Meroni and government sources recently said they were threatening to reject European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s bid for re-election – most likely in the form of an abstention.

Official sources hinted that Italy may not support upcoming proposals on top EU jobs if the two-day summit in Brussels fails to reach concrete guarantees on topics related to the EU’s strategic agenda for the next five years, such as defense, key investments and migration – “nothing is certain at the moment.”

But Melloni’s own words do a better job of explaining the real stakes of her current hardline diplomatic stance.

Merloni told parliament on Wednesday (June 26) that Italy must receive the recognition that “rightfully belongs to us” “without begging.”

Eliminating Eurosceptic rhetoric and achieving results

In the weeks following the EU election results, the Merloni political family (ECR) has moved from Potential Kingmaker Some top and key posts will be off the table in the upcoming EU term – as the three traditional centrist groups (the European People’s Party, the Social Democrats and the Liberals) will be able to secure a large enough majority without having to seek an alliance with the far-right parties.

For two years, Meroni and her party had softened their stance towards Brussels, but the EU’s post-election rejection prompted her to return to her original Eurosceptic stance.

Such a message replicates her traditional rhetoric of the “underdog”, defending the interests of ordinary people, at the EU level, and now serves her populist politics better because it enables her to pit “citizens” against the undemocratic oligarchy of Brussels bureaucrats.

In addition to leading the European Revolutionary Right Party, Merloni is first and foremost the leader of the Italian Brotherhood, which has repeatedly denounced the European Union as a group of power-hungry, authoritarian elites that are out of touch with the interests of the people they rule.

She embodied this message perfectly in her speech to the Italian Parliament. “The logic of consensus is being obscured by decisions being made behind the scenes, with a few deciding for everyone,” she said, adding that she took issue with that logic “on behalf of the Italian government”.

“I’m not surprised that this practice occurred before, during and after the campaign,” Meloni said. “No true democrat who believes in popular sovereignty will accept it.”

The message is entirely consistent with that conveyed earlier this month by her close political partner, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, who saidEU leaders hold first talks after European elections Ignore the “will of the European people”.

Since taking office in 2022, Merloni’s party, far from abandoning its anti-EU rhetoric, has only made strategic changes.

In fact, the ministers she selected built a winning narrative through their visits to Brussels, whose core message was to bring tangible results, prioritizing Italy’s interests over those of the EU.

In recent negotiations on EU rules on corporate supply chain sustainability obligations, for example, Italy Leading the push for major amendments Late stage of the legislative process.

At the time, Meroni’s enterprise minister, Adolfo Urso, boasted that Italy had managed to block the law’s passage by reopening negotiations and reaching agreements with other countries on parallel documents that were also meant to be in the final stages before formal EU approval — specifically, plastic waste legislation.

Speaking to the media in Brussels, he said the last-minute political reshuffle was aimed mainly at Italy’s domestic audience and would help Italy gain a major political position at the EU negotiating table.

What Meloni wants

For Meloni, this achievement means She told Italy’s parliament she hoped to secure “better” representation for the country than it had in the outgoing legislature – where Paolo Gentiloni served as economy minister.

According to government sources, she is considering the post of vice president to oversee “two or three areas” – related to “competition, trade, the financial sector (or) industrial policy” – a role for which Rome plans to nominate European Affairs Minister Raffaele Fitto.

Judging from Meroni’s speech to Parliament, on key issues the country hopes to influence EU policy, immigration and green policy.

She insisted that Italy was setting a precedent for Europe on immigration, noting that a majority of member states had recently signed and sent a petition to the European Commission asking that the model of the Albania agreement be emulated.

She believes that the “memorandum with Egypt and Tunisia” recently signed by the European Commission should be replicated and shift the focus from “redistribution” to an externalization approach, “as emphasized in von der Leyen’s recent letter to EU leaders.”

Another key battleground for Meroni is bringing “common sense and pragmatism” to the Green Deal, arguing that sticking to the current path would ignore the will of citizens expressed in the June 9 vote.

“No one has ever denied that electric vehicles can be part of the solution to decarbonizing transport, but it makes no sense to ban the production of diesel and petrol cars from 2035, thereby locking us into new strategic dependencies, such as on Chinese electric vehicles.”

“To support a contrary view is simply ideological folly, and we will work hard to correct it,” she said.

Overall, she said many regulations needed to be changed so that the EU was no longer a “bureaucratic giant” that was alienated from citizens, as the voter abstentions showed.

To address this, Merloni suggested setting up “a dedicated debureaucratisation mission” to remove the red tape that currently disadvantages EU businesses.

(Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic)

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