It’s a shocking moment for a right-wing politician who until recently was dismissed as an inflammatory extremist and whose meteoric rise has caused heartburn among mainstream Western leaders, including President Biden, just under two years into his presidency.
As Italy’s 69th prime minister since World War Two and the first woman to lead a government, Meloni is struggling with one of the world’s highest debt burdens, the lowest birth rates and a devastating pandemic. She has failed to stem immigration as promised in her election campaign or to reform Italy’s sclerotic economy, which has been stagnant for a quarter of a century.
But she has played a shrewd and weak hand — so shrewd, in fact, that Ms. Meloni is seen as a key player in the post-election battle for the European Union’s 450 million citizens, which culminates on Sunday.
If she takes on the role, as European leaders expect, she will face crucial choices that will determine the continent’s course for the rest of the decade.
Put plainly, she has two choices: She can align her nationalist bloc in the European Parliament with the pragmatists who have spent decades building consensus to deepen European integration and fight climate change and Russian aggression. Or she can join forces with far-right populists who are ideologically closer to her, like France’s far-right leader Marine Le Pen and Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who despise European rule-making and carbon-reduction policies and who many fear see Ukraine’s struggle for sovereignty as a challenge to European identity and values.
And who knows what Meloni will do?
Her rivals – German mainstream conservative Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, and Le Pen, who has purged her party’s anti-Semitic traditions and is currently leading the French opinion polls – have both been pursuing her vigorously, but neither has won her support.
The Italian prime minister, no fool, is biding her time. She is keeping her options open, and keeping an eye on opinion polls that suggest a broad surge in right-wing parties, including her own, in the elections. Polls show far-right parties coming in first or second in most of the EU, including Germany, France, Spain, Poland and Italy.
If those investigations are correct, Ms von der Leyen, seeking a second five-year term as the EU’s chief executive, will struggle to cobble together a coalition with a dwindling centrist bloc and has made no secret that she would like or may need support from Mellon’s allies.
“She is clearly pro-European. [Russian leader Vladimir] “President Putin … supports the rule of law,” von der Leyen said last month. If that is maintained, “we propose to cooperate,” she added.
But a major deal with Meloni is likely to infuriate members of von der Leyen’s own group of moderate lawmakers, some of whom will vote against her in a secret parliamentary ballot.
Ms. Le Pen, meanwhile, has openly called for a broad right-wing pact to combine her forces with those of Mr. Meloni. Working together, the two could forge an alliance worth more than a fifth of the divided parliament’s 720 seats, sending a shockwave through business as usual in Brussels. “Now is the time for unity,” Ms. Le Pen told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera last month.
In some ways, Meloni’s choice may be one of following his head or his heart.
The former means sticking to the middle path, reassuring markets and protecting Italy’s huge subsidies from the EU (more than $200 billion in pandemic recovery funds, the EU’s largest so far).
The latter would mean doubling down on the causes that drove Meloni’s political rise: culture war appeals to protect Europe’s national identity from a surge in immigration, traditional family appeals from LGBTQ+ rights, and national sovereignty from EU regulatory overreach.
A skilled tactician, since coming to power Mr. Meloni has maintained close ties with other far-right European leaders, including Mr. Le Pen and Mr. Orbán, both longtime admirers of Mr. Putin, and has also managed to tone down his once-inflammatory rhetoric and purify his party from its roots in post-war Italian fascism, while also reassuring Mr. Biden and other key NATO allies with his full support for Ukraine.
As The Economist charitably put it, she is proof that “Europe’s so-called far right, when in power, can behave like run-of-the-mill conservatives.”
Europe faces a devastating war in the east, a struggling economy lagging behind the United States and China, and a disgruntled electorate frustrated by entrenched ruling parties, inflation, immigration and climate change (or the measures to combat it).
A strong EU committed to steady reform has the best chance of overcoming these challenges. Mr Meloni, the election star, could help the EU’s chances of success – or undermine it.
