Meloni’s slaloms between Salvini, Tajani, Metsola and von der Leyen
How Giorgia Meloni moves in Palazzo Chigi. Damato's Scratches
Not bad yesterday's entirely political show at Palazzo Chigi under the stars, although not visible during the day, of the European Union. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni before receiving with all due honors the now friendly president of the Brussels Commission Ursula von der Leyen – and the recognition of being "a very strong woman", who when she speaks in community offices demonstrates that "Italy counts", so much so that it is now "at the center of the European debate both on immigration, on financing, and on digital, climate and social plans" – called the Northern League leader Matteo Salvini. He did it, even with the appearance of inviting him to a meeting between friends and allies, complete with mutual smiles and niceties in front of the photographers, to basically ask him to get his act together. A "perhaps even frank" meeting, wrote Marco Galluzzo in the Corriere della Sera .
The objectives of the two in Europe have become different, also due to the needs of this long electoral campaign which will only end in June for the renewal of the Strasbourg Parliament. Salvini cultivates – or appears to cultivate – the dream of a centre-right majority. or right-centre, even in the Union, as in Italy since the autumn of last year, without socialists or the like underfoot. Meloni, encouraged so publicly and clearly by Metsola, who has already been re-nominated for the presidency of the European Parliament by her friend and colleague of the European People's Party Antonio Tajani, secretary of Forza Italia as well as vice-president of the Council and Minister of Foreign Affairs, has proposed an apparently more limited objective. Which is – he said several times and repeated yesterday outside Palazzo Chigi – to participate in "European institutions in which Italy counts for much more", even compared to what Metsola has already recognized.
Imagining that this objective, more limited than the one he pursues between Pontida, Florence and other locations or squares where perhaps he will continue to present himself before June with his favorite far-right friends in Europe, Salvini wants or can prefer next year, with the electoral campaign over, or rather with the electoral campaigns over, in the plural, a break with Meloni in Italy and a consequent government crisis means living in unreality. Even if already tried by Salvini in the summer of 2019, in the aftermath of the previous European elections, drinking mojtos and other drinks on the Adriatic beaches, claiming full powers and betting on early elections only because the then secretary had given him a glimpse of them from the opposition of the Democratic Party Nicola Zingaretti. Who then aligned himself with Matteo Renzi's yellow-red pirouettes without even managing to keep him on the path to splitting. A scenario that, remembering it, must have become a nightmare for the Northern League leader in front of the model, or under the imaginary arch of his bridge over the Strait of Messina.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/meloni-salvini-metsola/ on Thu, 07 Dec 2023 06:45:08 +0000.