Giorgia Meloni Gets the Big Freeze — for Now

The fix is in. That’s the upshot of the report that Italy’s premier, Giorgia Meloni, is “furious,” as the Financial Times puts it, that her conservative coalition is “being left out” of the negotiations over who will occupy top leadership positions in the European Union’s government. Signora Meloni getting frozen out is especially galling after her fellow right-wing parties jolted the continent’s liberal establishment with a strong showing in the EU parliament voting. If anyone imagined that the voice of the voters might translate to actual influence over the continental superstate, though, think again. The voting, at first glance, might have looked like a conservative tide buffeting the mandarins of the EU. Signora Meloni’s European Conservatives and Reformers group gained 14 seats. The rightist Identity and Democracy group added nine seats. President Macron’s left-leaning Renew lost 22 seats.Even so, the results are not enough to shake the center-left’s control of the EU. The establishment European People’s party, which says it counts EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen in its “family,” gained seats too. Rather than accepting the idea that European voters had rebuked the leftist drift of the EU — with its penchant for costly climate mandates and failure to control migration — the establishment is staying the course.That means reserving for themselves the jobs at the top of the EU pyramid, including Ms. von der Leyen as president and Estonia’s premier to be EU’s head diplomat. The left-leaning heads of France, Germany, Poland, Holland, Greece, and Spain kept Signora Meloni cooling her heels while they spent time hashing out how to divide the spoils among themselves. It was a “strategic choice,” an official told the FT, to show Signora Meloni as “isolated.”That could prove to have been a mistake, though. “Snubbing the Italian premier,” the FT observes, “could further complicate efforts to secure a swift deal on the bloc’s leadership and priorities.” If anything, the left’s rebuff has only stiffened Signora Meloni’s resolve. “We will not accept a pre-packaged agreement,” she explained to reporters to signal her displeasure. The Italian premier, too, has some other cards up her sleeve.While the center-left parties are now the three largest in the EU parliament, Signora Meloni could, say, team up with Marine Le Pen’s party — and even the party aligned with Hungary’s Viktor Orban. That “supermerger,” as the FT puts it “would turn them into the third-largest force” in the parliament. “It is a poker game,” an Italian political analyst tells the FT. “It is very risky,” he adds, for the left “not having any kind of negotiation with Giorgia.”The result, for now, is that “a lot of good will was lost,” as an EU diplomat observed, and could imperil Ms. von der Leyen’s march toward a second term. The decision over the top EU posts is being postponed to later in the month. The delay, the FT reporters, could serve to “embolden” Signora Meloni to move toward closer ties with Madame Le Pen’s movement. The idea, in the FT’s telling, is seen as a kind of “Eurosceptic supergroup.”It’s hard, from where we sit, to see the downside of such a coalition. For too long, the EU has been dominated by bien-pensant liberals who have used the powers of the continental superstate to advance their political agenda and to quash the national identity of member states under the stifling embrace of “ever closer union.” If Brexit was one signal of voter discontent with this regime, the groundswell of conservatism in the parliamentary elections was another.The clumsiness of the EU leaders in excluding Signora Meloni from their counsels could be seen, too, as another example of their unwillingness — or inability — to heed the voice of the voters. Close observers of Italian politics have noted how that country’s left-wing establishment has tended to underestimate Signora Meloni’s political savvy, not to mention her resilience, at their own peril. The leftists of the EU appear to be making the same mistake.

Giorgia Meloni Gets the Big Freeze — for Now

Giorgia Meloni Gets the Big Freeze — for Now

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