28 May 2024

EURACTIV: The EPP game and Meloni’s challenges

Italy’s conservative Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has for months been politically courted by the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) and recently by far-right leader Marine Le Pen.

The EPP wants to use Meloni’s European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, or rather, its “healthy elements”, to have an alternative majority in the European Parliament.

Should the EU centre-right disagree on a specific policy file within a likely parliamentary coalition with the EU socialists (S&D) and the liberals (Renew), the EPP can seek majorities on the right – and Meloni can offer a solution. 

On the right, Le Pen dreams of a big right-wing bloc in which ECR and far-right Identity and Democracy (ID) groups join forces, becoming the second–largest group in Parliament. 

Several ΕU leaders have described Meloni as “constructive” at EU Council gatherings. This constructiveness will be needed as the post-election challenges will require a lot of skill and manoeuvring.

If a big right-bloc is formed with ECR-ID forces, Meloni’s first challenge will be to ensure its unity.  

Both ECR and ID parties want “national sovereignty” to be boosted, which often makes it more difficult to find common ground on some EU issues. It will be hard for Meloni to offer the EPP a steady and rock-solid bloc. 

A second challenge is the numbers. For Meloni to be able to offer a safe majority to the EPP, her bloc will need to be bigger than the projected 224 seats of the EU socialists and the liberals together.

According to current Europe Elects projections, if all ECR and ID members join forces, they could control 143 seats. With Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party  – currently non-attached – the number goes up to 152, still well below the joint socialist-liberal tally.

Together with the EPP, they would have 332 out of 720 seats, a few dozen short of a majority. And there comes the third challenge: 

The EU socialists and liberals have made it clear that they will never accept Meloni’s group as part of a pro-EU coalition, with even less appetite for Le Pen’s ID.

For her part, Meloni has said she wants the EU socialists in the opposition, drawing clear battle lines. 

The liberals insist on a pro-EU coalition, unless they change course.

In the past, some of them voted with Meloni’s ECR and the EPP, especially on agricultural issues, and no one made a big deal about it.

But a Meloni-led bloc that includes Le Pen will be tough to sell to liberal voters, especially for Emmanuel Macron’s electorate, which sees Le Pen as his number one foe. 

To appease EU liberals, Meloni will have to present an “acceptable” political profile of her bloc, probably getting closer to the centre. 

However, that might not be enough for the liberals, it could also alienate some of her own voters, and will be seen as a potential threat to the EPP itself, as it captures the centre-right side of the political spectrum. In this case, the EPP may fall in its own trap.

Ursula von der Leyen might want to have some votes from the ECR to be re-elected in the European Parliament. And she may well get them. 

But the hard-right being a viable “2.0 alternative” in future policymaking still seems to be far away. ..

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