Brothers of Italy is confirmed as the leading political force in Italy, with more than 28% of the votes, according to the first data of the scrutiny in the last country that has closed, at 11 p.m., the polling stations for the European elections. Second place goes to the Democratic Party, which would reach 25%, closing the gap with a result well above the last general elections in 2022.
The victory for the far-right party comes at the end of an electoral campaign that was once again centered on “Giorgia”, the leader of the party and already Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. “With Giorgia, Italy changes Europe” was the chosen slogan, simple as simple was that “Ready” – ready to govern – that led her to obtain 26 percent in the September 2022 elections that took her to Palazzo Chigi. A victory then for a party that came from 4 percent in the previous general elections and 6.4% in the European elections in 2019. A clear victory now, although it does not reach that 30 percent that Brothers of Italy dreamed of. for months, in a very long electoral campaign that began in December in Atreju, the party’s big party in which Meloni, between a hug for Elon Musk and another for his friend “Santi” Abascal, was already looking at the Europeans.
“Tonight is even more beautiful than two years ago,” Meloni celebrated, appearing at two in the morning this Monday. “We are the strongest Government in Europe,” she added after having stressed the importance of the appointment with the polls in the electoral campaign.
“It’s a damn important vote,” the Italian prime minister had said a few days ago at her campaign’s big event in Piazza del Popolo, in Rome, where after a quick catwalk of the main candidates, the protagonist was once again her, the only one among European leaders who decided to lead the candidacy for the European elections in all electoral colleges. In a 50-minute speech she then appealed to go vote in what was, she said, a “referendum” between two visions of Europe. A referendum “between an ideological, centralist, nihilistic, increasingly technocratic Europe, and our brave, proud Europe, which does not forget its roots, because they define who we are, and help us orient ourselves in the darkness of fear,” he said, at the gates of a vote that, with the post-electoral pacts still up in the air, could make the group he presides, the European Conservatives and Reformists, decisive for the new balances of the European Chamber. “After the League, let’s win the Champions League,” she said.
Courted by Ursula von der Leyen but also by Marine Le Pen, on that occasion Meloni did not name either one. But, a few days later, she once again showed her good disposition towards the leader of the National Group. “She is taking an interesting path. In this legislature, sometimes we have found ourselves on the same side,’” she commented in an interview with Il Corriere della Sera, in what seemed like a nod to Le Pen’s direct invitation to form a united front in the new European Parliament, with the Identity and Democracy group already purged of the uncomfortable and increasingly unpresentable partners of Alternative for Germany. It remains to be seen now, with the results in hand, if the wet dream of a union of the ultras in Europe comes true or if the divisions that cross them prevail.
Internal competition in the Government
The same divisions that Meloni experiences in his own Government, with his partner-rival Matteo Salvini, who was desperately in need of a good result, and who has to settle for revalidating the result of the general elections, 8.8%, light years from that 34.3 of the 2019 European elections, in which the League was the first party. A Salvini who, creating quite a bit of unrest in the League’s bases, decided to bet on nominating a general, Roberto Vannacci, suspended from the army for a homophobic and racist self-published book that has become a bestseller and that, during the electoral campaign, , asked to vote with a “decima”, a cross, a clear reference to the X Flotilla Más, an assault corps during fascism. It was the card that the leader of the League – when the times in which he became the first party are further than ever, precisely in the 2019 European Championships – played to continue with the competition on the right that has characterized his relationship with Meloni since the beginning of the alliance.
A radicalization culminated in an attack by one of the most prominent representatives of the formation on the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, on the day of the national holiday of June 2, and which has ended up further straining the relationship with Antonio Tajani. , the leader of Forza Italia. In the first major elections after the death of Silvio Berlusconi, Tajani has toyed with the idea of ”surpassing” the League to rebalance the game of forces in the government coalition. And, according to the first data, he could achieve it.
It was enough for Tajani to distance himself from Salvini’s outbursts, who, while the Executive prepares to welcome Joe Biden among the G7 leaders in two weeks, boasted of a telephone conversation with Donal Trump to express his support. in the face of judicial “persecution.”
Elly Schlein’s comeback
If the victory of the Brothers of Italy was taken for granted, the result of the first opposition party, led by Elly Schlein, was less certain. The former MEP and also head of the list in the schools of Central Italy and the Islands has decided to integrate independent candidates and has achieved a result that seemed very distant a year and a half ago after the setback in the general elections, where the PD was left in a 19%, dropping to 14th in the polls of the following months. “If the forecasts are confirmed, it is an extraordinary result for us. We are the party that has grown the most from politics, the distance with Giorgia Meloni is shortening,” said Schlein with the first results in his hands.
Both the PD leader and Meloni presented the electoral campaign as a battle between the two of them, although the first was a candidate in two constituencies and the second in all. Schlein had everything to lose in the polarization, but he has endured the invitation, trying to campaign on the issues of the minimum wage or the criminalization of immigrants by the right, while Meloni went to Albania to visit the detention centers that the Italian Government is building there after an agreement with Tirana. “A mega electoral announcement that costs us 800 million,” said Schlein, who decided to close the electoral campaign in Padua, in the same square where on June 7, 40 years ago, the leader of the PCI Enrico Berlinguer, who died four days later, held his last rally. “Long live Enrico, Long live anti-fascist Italy!” Schlein shouted, closing his speech.
The objective for the leader of the PD was also to reclaim the role of leader of the opposition against Antonio Conte, the leader of the 5 Star Movements, reluctant to assume the role of gregarious in that alliance called “wide field” that has not quite gelled despite having worked in some regional and municipal elections. Finally, the ‘grillini’, who obtained 15.4% in the September 2022 general elections, are around 10%. A disappointing result for Conte, who will now have to choose which group his formation will join, with an identity yet to be defined after having led the Italian Government between 2018 and 2021, first in coalition with Salvini and then with the PD.
To the left of the PD, a good result from the Green and Left Alliance, which would double the result obtained in the legislative elections a year and a half ago and would be close to 7%, after having opted for strong candidates from a political point of view, such as the of Ilaria Salis, the anti-fascist activist detained in Hungary, or that of Mimmo Lucano, former mayor of a town in Calabria who became a symbol in a model of welcoming migrants that Salvini, when he became Minister of the Interior, wanted to dismantle.
Starting this Monday, the effects of the results on the balance of forces in the Government will begin to be seen. And above all, it will be understood whether Meloni will be able to have the influence in Europe to which he aspired.
