Radical right well ahead in Italy, ‘but it will not be a second Hungary’
Giorgia Meloni looks set to become Italy’s first female prime minister. There are elections in the country on Sunday and her party Fratelli d’Italia is firmly at the top of the list polls. Along with other right-wing parties, she is likely to win enough seats to form a right-wing coalition.
Meloni is very popular in Italy, but a just as large part of the population fears the rise of this far-right politician. She is nationalistic and critical of the European Union, so they are also looking at Italy with suspicion in Brussels this weekend. The major German weekly Stern proverb her even ‘the dangerous woman of Europe’. Does it really pose such a big risk to the EU?
‘She’s not stupid’
“It is always difficult to do business with extreme nationalist parties in Brussels,” says political scientist Hendrik Vos, director of the Center for EU Studies at Ghent University. “The European Union is a factory of compromises. If you then have a government dominated by a party that says ‘we only think about Italy’, negotiating becomes rather grueling and difficult. “
Recently, Meloni strongly criticized the EU’s “rule of law”. “Europe has been involved in everything in recent years, including how to cook insects,” she said. “Meanwhile, they didn’t see the need to create a strategy for our energy supply.”
Still, it doesn’t look like Meloni will be a bomb under European cooperation. It is clear that she does not want Italy to leave the EU. “She’s Eurosceptic, but she’s not stupid,” said Italian political scientist Nathalie Tocci, former policy adviser to EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini.
“Meloni knows that to keep support, she has to come up with results. That means there’s a limit to how much she can mess with Europe.”
‘Italy depends on the EU’
Because she cannot achieve those results without all the money that Italy receives from Brussels. For example, the country will receive about 200 billion euros from the European corona recovery fund. Vos: “During the election campaign you can say very boldly: this is the way in which we can attune problems to us. But yes, as soon as you have to negotiate with other countries, you are in another. In the case of Italy where men needs a lot of money from Europe.”
Political scientists Tocci and Vos think that this financial dependence will considerably curb Meloni’s room for maneuver in Europe. For example, she will not just forge an alliance with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Tocci expects, even though they are ideologically close to each other.
“If Meloni wants to achieve something in Europe, it is not very useful to have a friend in the European Council who is also the pariah in the European Council.” Orbán removes the rest of Europe from cooperating in many areas, which is why the European Commission wants to suspend €7.5 billion in EU funds for Hungary.
Would you like to know more about Meloni’s ideas? Correspondent Heleen D’Haens made this video about her:
Will Italy get a radical right premiere? This is Giorgia Meloni
Vos does think that the balance of power in Brussels can shift somewhat with Meloni as prime minister. For example in the field of migration, which her party wants to restrict considerably. “She will get allies on some issues. Nationalist and conservative policies will get a little more support. But it is not the case that the whole balance will suddenly change.”
But I’m sure there will be no situation where Italy is used to support Hungary to Ukraine Russia to keep Russia.”
Meloni to start with a tough approach to Russia, which, for example, the right-wing populist Matteo Salvini questions, because it affects the Italian economy too hard.
Vos: “We are now probably going to a period where Italy is on a collision course with the EU and where there will be a lot of delays because there are a lot of delays. That is of course not the leanest way to deal with all the crises at the moment. “