European vote could tip the scales on Meloni’s far-right agenda in Italy | national news

MILAN (AP) — As Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni embraces a foreign policy appeasing Western allies, the culture wars at home preserve her far-right credentials ahead of European parliamentary elections where her neo-fascist-rooted Brotherhood of Italy party is projected. to secure significant gains—and a possible coalition role.

In less than two years at the helm of the EU’s third-largest economy, Meloni has become Europe’s most powerful right-wing leader, a position underlined in a fiery May speech at a Vox rally in Spain that included the leader of French extreme right, Marine. Le Pen, Hungarian President Viktor Orbán and pro-Trump Republicans.

Still, her pro-Ukraine and pro-Israel policies have proved reassuring to centrist US and European allies as Italy prepares to host US President Joe Biden and other leaders of the Group of Seven most industrialized nations at the end of the month June.

The June 6-9 European elections could begin to tip Meloni’s balancing act.

“I think there are two Melonis, and the Meloni who gets more attention is the pragmatic, pro-Ukrainian Meloni,” said Wolfango Piccoli of London-based consultancy Teneo. “There is another Meloni, back in Italy, where he is. Pursuing a clear right-wing agenda on a variety of issues, from migration to socio-cultural values. The European elections could be a moment of truth. She was never forced to take a clear ideological position.

After campaigning on an anti-EU platform, Meloni has adjusted his rhetoric as Europe pours more than 210 billion euros ($228 billion) into Italy’s pandemic recovery funds. As prime minister, Meloni has a potential political ally in EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who has not ruled out including Meloni’s party in a grand coalition if necessary.

Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party will grow from six seats to at least 20 seats when Italians go to the polls on June 8-9, with Meloni customizing polls by asking voters to write in her name, “Giorgia,” in addition to checking the party’s symbol.

Even as her popularity grows, Italian opposition leaders, activists and journalists are sounding the alarm about the spread of far-right policies that limit LGBTQ+ and women’s rights, while creating what some see as a climate of xenophobia and intimidation .

Life senator Liliana Segre, a nine-year Holocaust survivor, told the ANSA news agency that she was “very worried” about the outcome of the European elections.

So far in her tenure, Meloni has delegated most social and cultural policy to her ministers, giving her a degree of separation on many hot-button issues.

Migration is an exception, as he backs his so-called Mattei plan to fund projects in African countries along migrant routes in exchange for better controls, while pushing ahead with plans to run asylum reception centers in Albania – winning the consensus from von der Leyen, a development she finds herself on the campaign trail.

“Here we are making history. … This is a referendum,” Meloni said at the final election rally in Rome’s Piazza del Popolo on Saturday.

“When it comes to Meloni and the potential impact on EU politics after the European elections, (victory) depends on the numbers and the chemistry that emerges,” said Simone Tagliapietra, an analyst at the Bruegel think tank in Brussels. He noted that the kind of social-cultural policies her government was most keen to tackle in Italy fell largely under national, not EU, competences.

Meloni’s government banned city governments from legally registering a non-biological parent in same-sex couples, effectively limiting their parental rights, and made abortion access more difficult by allowing anti-abortion activists to enter abortion clinics, which activists say creates an intimidating environment. . Her government has also come out against gender theory and is pushing through parliament a law that would ban surrogacy.

Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano is unapologetically defeating foreigners and left-wing appointees at the helm of iconic museums, institutions and opera houses, showing a willingness to lead the cultural debate in a way not seen in previous ideological shifts between left and right. . The late Silvio Berlusconi, three times conservative prime minister, never blinked at Italy’s cultural institutions.

Under Meloni, media watchdog Reporters Without Borders downgraded Italy five notches in its annual press freedom index, placing it in the “problematic” category alongside Poland and Hungary. In a recent episode, journalists from state broadcaster RAI accused the government’s new leadership of censoring a planned Liberation Day monologue denouncing fascism.

More recently, the editor of the Turin daily La Stampa, Massimo Giannini, said that four police officers woke him up in his hotel room at 4 a.m. to file a defamation complaint over comments critical of Meloni’s government in a television show the night before. Giannini told private TV La7 that such treatment is usually reserved for “drug traffickers, not journalists”.

The new Made in Italy Ministry has engaged in extraordinary tactics, such as the recent seizure of dozens of Fiat Topolino microcars emblazoned with the Italian flag, even though they were manufactured in Morocco.

Such operations serve a dual purpose, Piccoli said, distracting attention from Italy’s ongoing structural problems and stagnant economy while appealing to the Brothers of Italy faithful.

“The beauty of all this, from my point of view, is that we are almost halfway through her term and none of the structural problems in Italy have been addressed,” he said, including the right-wing issue of demographic collapse or pension reform. “You just wonder if they’re just going for easier things that help mobilize public opinion rather than addressing the structural problem of this country, including the lack of economic growth.”

Some analysts say Meloni’s pragmatic bent calls into question the degree to which she personally believes in the far-right social and cultural agenda.

Political analyst Roberto D’Alimonte notes that the growing popularity of the Brothers of Italy is taking into account fickle voters who do not necessarily share the same ideology, which could give Meloni room to weaken far-right orthodoxy if he increases his mandate in the next Italian parliamentary vote.

“He is a skilled politician,” said D’Alimonte, of Rome’s LUISS university. “If he wins the next election, we might see a Meloni who tries to change that, becoming more conservative even on cultural matters, rather than far-right. .”

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