Meloni tries to calm the EU: "Italy wants to collaborate in European solutions"

Giorgia Meloni's Italy does not give up having "a strong voice in Europe" but it has not come to break anything.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
03 November 2022 Thursday 13:30
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Meloni tries to calm the EU: "Italy wants to collaborate in European solutions"

Giorgia Meloni's Italy does not give up having "a strong voice in Europe" but it has not come to break anything. It is the message that today the new Italian Prime Minister wanted to convey to the community institutions during her visit to Brussels, her first trip abroad since her election in September. "I wanted to give the signal of an Italy that wants to participate, collaborate, defend Italian interests in a European dimension, seeking together with other countries the best solutions to the great challenges we face", said Meloni at the end of his european debut

Face-to-face meetings with community leaders can serve to "dismantle the narrative" about the new Italian government. "We are not Martians, we are people of flesh and blood," said the far-right leader in a statement to the media before her working dinner with the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, the last appointment of a day in which she declares herself "happy" Before, Meloni met with the president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, and the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, both members of the European conservative family, which has blessed the new Italian far-right alliance .

Meloni's charged rhetoric from the electoral campaign ("If I win, the party is over" in the EU, said the leader of the Brothers of Italy, a former militant of the neo-fascist youth of the Italian Social Movement) has given way in recent weeks to a more moderate ideological discourse, conciliatory in the economic and Atlanticist and pro-Ukrainian in the geopolitical field. The government's objective, she said upon taking office, will not be “to slow down or sabotage the EU but to make it more effective in responding to crises.

Even so, the new Italian prime minister is an enigma for her European partners, hence the importance of this first visit to Brussels, where she arrived with a cautious attitude and a highly pragmatic agenda. Although during the campaign Meloni demanded that the recovery plan agreed with Mario Draghi be renegotiated with Brussels, today he has not raised the flag of this battle, a priori lost because in the meantime it has been approved by the Italian Parliament and the European Commission, which has already authorized the disbursement of 20,000 million euros.

"We are prepared to face the big issues, starting with the energy crisis and working together to provide solutions to families and companies against speculation," Meloni tweeted this morning shortly before arriving in the community capital. The Italian, all smiles at her handshakes with community leaders, she interpreted the rain that greeted her upon arrival at the European Parliament as a good omen. “Visita bagnata, visita fortunata”, she has been heard commenting with the Italian-speaking Metsola.

Both Rome and Brussels have an interest in the bilateral relationship being as peaceful as possible. Italy's public debt is around 150% of GDP, it has 200,000 million euros from the EU recovery plan at its disposal if it meets the agreed conditions and the markets, as has been seen with the United Kingdom, will not tolerate experiments . Several years ago, Meloni left behind his youthful dalliances with the anti-euro speech that brought Italy to the brink of the abyss eight years ago.

On the European side, the priority of the institutions and leaders of the European Council is to create a relationship of trust and prevent Meloni's Italy from making a common front with the eurosceptic government of Poland, especially now that the war in Ukraine has distanced it from the Hungary of Russophile Viktor Orbán, until recently his best ally in his crusade against Brussels and the values ​​of liberal democracies. To avoid highlighting possible underlying contradictions, there was no joint press conference with any of the community leaders with whom he met, only institutional statements that delve into the will to appease and the desire to maintain unity.

"Italy has always had a central role within the EU," Metsola tweeted after his meeting with the Italian. "With the Russian invasion of Ukraine, energy prices at record highs and inflation on the rise, we must be more united than ever. We are stronger if we are united," added the Maltese conservative, who gave an effusive hug to the politics of extreme right. Parliamentary sources say that the meeting "confirmed that Italy will continue to play a central role in the EU's decision-making process."

More complicated was the appointment with Von der Leyen, who during the campaign provoked the anger of the Italian right by commenting that Brussels, as had been seen those days with the proposal to freeze community funds to Hungary, has "instruments" to act "if things are going in a difficult direction." Today, the German thanked the Italian leader for "the gesture" of visiting the European institutions on her first trip abroad and her exchange of views on Ukraine, energy, the recovery plan or immigration. Italy's new priority, the head of government has clarified, is "the control of the external borders" of the EU, an issue on which she has said she has found "ears willing to listen".

While Meloni made his first official visit to the community institutions, several ships owned by European NGOs were sailing near the Italian coast with about a thousand people on board rescued in recent days on the high seas waiting to disembark. The French SOS Mediterranee has asked Spain, France and Greece for help to allow the entry of 234 immigrants after the new Italian government has said it plans to close its ports to foreign NGOs. One of the ships, the Humanity 1, has a German flag and Berlin has asked Rome to help them “quickly”.

"Saving lives at sea is a moral duty and a legal obligation for member states under international law," said a spokeswoman for the European Commission on Thursday, who recalled, however, that Brussels has no role in this type of operation. . In this area, unlike the economy, there seems to be no room for compromise. The blockade of Italian ports against NGOs confirms Meloni's intention to maintain a tougher policy than his predecessors, in rhetoric and in practice, to demand more ambitious European solutions.

Immigration is, along with energy, one of the areas in which the new Italian leader has proposed "continuing to collaborate" with the President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, with whom she had a first telephone contact on Tuesday. Both countries are net recipients of immigration from the Mediterranean route and, although with nuances, they defend similar positions in the thorny debate on the migration pact, an issue on which the EU has been unable to agree since 2015. "We will continue to work together on the framework of the EU and NATO and strengthening our bilateral relations. We count on Italy at the summit of the