Italy’s far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said Monday she wants to build a right-wing majority with Italian leadership after bloc elections in less than two weeks.
Far-right parties have struggled to cooperate effectively within the EU this term, hampered by divisions over key issues such as Ukraine and mutual vetoes by national interests. However, Meloni is convinced that there is room for cooperation on the right.
Speaking on Rai Radio1 on Monday, she said: “Today there are opportunities to change the European situation that have never existed before. We have to use it.
“There is room to build a different majority in the European Parliament, and thus a different Europe with different policies,” she said.
The leader of the French National Assembly, Marine Le Pen, and the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, want Meloni’s cooperation – and the share of seats that his Brothers of Italy party wants to win in the elections.
Over the weekend, Le Pen reportedly called on Meloni to unite to create the second largest group in the European Parliament. Von der Leyen said a few days earlier that she was ready to ignore the homophobic policy carried out by Meloni’s party in Italy and incorporate it into her own European People’s Party.
Asked how it is possible to reconcile such different right-wing positions as those represented, for example, by von der Leyen and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Meloni asserted that Italy is no longer following France and Germany, but leading the way. “If the Italians help me, we can change Europe. »
“We should be happy. I don’t remember Italy being particularly central in the past. We conservatives are the only ones who can create progressive change.”