Giorgia Meloni has taken a high-stakes poker game with Ursula von der Leyen to the last round, as the two spoke by telephone yesterday evening about Fratelli D’Italia supporting the Commissioner’s reappointment on July 18.
The Italian PM pushed von der Leyen to repeat publicly assurances the Commission president has given her in private — promises that in her second term, she will allegedly not give away too much ground to the European Parliament’s Greens and Socialists & Democrats on immigration and environment policy.
This will permit Meloni to back her in today’s European Parliament vote, without her right-wing rival Matteo Salvini attacking her, said Italy’s Corriere della Sera.
Meloni “only wants to support Ursula von der Leyen if she radically dismantles the Green Deal,” says Green MEP Michael Bloss.
Meloni has also sought a senior executive vice president role for Italy, possibly over French opposition.
Getting this will permit Meloni to present herself as a mainstream moderate at the heart of Europe, rather than an excluded sideshow as she appeared at the EU leaders’ June 17 dinner.
It could be a compelling riposte to Salvini, who has joined forces with Viktor Orbán’s Patriots group and made opposing Meloni on foreign policy a cornerstone of his Lega party’s drive to hoover up votes on Italy’s right, as Meloni moves to the centre.
A new alliance of Nordic centre-right MEPs have declared they will not back Ursula von der Leyen for a second term, viewing her too close to the European Greens. https://t.co/IxWUvoRcaw
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) July 18, 2024
In her roadmap released this morning for what a second von der Leyen term would look like, the European Commission president also announced her next Commission will include a new Commissioner for the Mediterranean.
“I will appoint a Commissioner for the Mediterranean to focus on investment and partnerships, economic stability, job creation, energy, security, migration and other areas of mutual interests, respecting our values and principles. They will work closely with the High Representative/Vice-President,” says von der Leyen in her “Political Guidelines” document released the morning of the vote.
The brief for the new commissioner appears to echo Meloni’s language from her January 29 Africa summit in Rome, promising investment and security guarantees to northern African leaders in return for their help in limiting irregular migration.
It “seemed like a joke, but the Commissioner for the Mediterranean could be the reason why Meloni’s MEPs will vote for von der Leyen,” said Italian journalist Gerardo Fortuna.
This portfolio will be “an appendix of the EU’s diplomatic action” and will be “focused on a new Pact for the Mediterranean”, he added.
Meanwhile, the 24 MEPs from her Fratelli d’Italia party held a video meeting last night, without Meloni, who was travelling to Oxford to attend the UK’s meeting of the European Political Community at Blenheim Palace.
The MEPs allegedly discussed turning on Von der Leyen in the hopes of Roberta Metsola taking her place.
The limit of that gamesmanship, though, is the worry that Metsola would likely form a more conventional alliance of EPP, S&D, Reform, and Greens, excluding the FdI and ECR entirely.
The Fratelli MEPs viewed the election of Meloni’s associate, Antonella Sberna, as a European Parliament vice president a hopeful sign the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) bloc, which Meloni heads, was not being excluded from the EU mainstream via a ‘cordon sanitaire’.
Sberna is in her first term as an MEP, but worked previously in the European Parliament and is well known in Brussels.
Ursula von der Leyen will be hurt by a European Court of Justice ruling criticising her lack of transparency when awarding vaccine contracts, her MEP critics have predicted. https://t.co/9B9nVfoB43
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) July 17, 2024
