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Italy PM Meloni has to strike a balance with the EU

The new Italian leader is keen to renegotiate the post-pandemic EU recovery package for Italy to use the funds for “new priorities” — soaring energy prices, the war in Ukraine and migration – though Brussels has already said no

During her successful campaign to become Italy’s first woman prime minister, just two months ago Georgia Meloni warned that the “good times are over” in Europe. Yet last week she was at European Union headquarters in Brussels smiling and reassuring the organization’s top leaders that Italy is fully onboard with their major policies.

Facing pressing and shared European challenges including migration, potential recession and soaring energy prices, she is now struggling with the conundrum that has always been at the core of the EU: where does a country’s national interest stop and union solidarity take over?

In her first speech after her Brothers of Italy political party received the most votes in Italy’s first national election since 2018, Meloni remarked “when we said that in Europe you start from national interests to arrive at a shared solution, we didn’t say it because we were populist but because we were lucid”.

“The attitude is that Italy needs to return to defending its national interests –something that will change in the next few months,” she added.

“This doesn’t mean a negative attitude to Europe but a positive attitude to ourselves,” Meloni said. “We must start from the national interests, because others do it.”

Can the leader of a onetime Eurosceptic, neo-fascist party truly placate the EU? Some say she has no choice – she cannot jeopardize the vast EU sums allocated as part of the bloc’s pandemic relief package for Italy.

Now in power and forced into the give-and-take of pragmatic politics, she says she has found “ears that were willing to listen”. Pointedly making Brussels her first foreign trip as prime minister, she said her talks were “frank and positive” as she met with EU leaders in person to dispel what she calls preconceptions. At one point, Meloni was even met by a group of apparent fans who chanted her name and asked for selfies.

“I promise I didn’t pay them,” she joked.

The charm campaign came as Italy grapples with one of the highest sovereign debt ratios in the world for a major economy as well as the Europe-wide sense of dread over soaring energy prices, potential recession and continued armed conflict.

So it’s no secret why Meloni is playing nice. Like many countries in the region, Italy needs EU support to face the range of crises.

Another measure of her new willingness was the first stop on her Brussels trip: a friendly informal lunch at the Italian ambassador’s residence with EU Economy Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni, himself a former prime minister and onetime stalwart in the Democratic Party, the political nemesis of Meloni’s Brothers of Italy.

Then she made the rounds of the EU’s main institutions, meeting with European Parliament head Roberta Metsola, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the European Council’s Charles Michel.

“She was mainly in a listening mood,” one EU official told the press. “The climate was very serene.”

Metsola, a native of Malta who speaks Italian, said Meloni’s visit showed the two are “totally aligned on Ukraine”, allaying the fears of many who remember the days of pro-Russian rhetoric from Italy’s far-right.

Meloni told Metsola she was “very happy to have chosen Brussels and the EU as her first foreign visit”.

“It represents a clear position that Italy has taken and that we intend to move forward with,” she said.

For her part, European Commission President Von der Leyen called Meloni’s choice to come to Brussels a “strong signal”. Her warm welcome was in contrast to comments made in the run-up to the Italian election when von der Leyen warned that the EU has “tools” to deal with the country if things go in a “difficult direction”.

The new Italian leader is keen to renegotiate the post-pandemic EU recovery package for Italy to use the funds for “new priorities” — soaring energy prices, the war in Ukraine and migration – though Brussels has already said no.

And as she cozied up to EU leaders in what some saw as a bit of theatre, a real-life drama was unfolding in the waters off Italy’s southern island of Sicily, where two migrant rescue ships were trying to enter the port at Catania. True to her pre-election vows, the government led by Meloni was denying the ships permission to land.

Upon returning to Italy, the new prime minister faced her first real international test: would she bow to pressure from other European nations and allow the ships flagged in Germany and Norway to land or turn them back to the open Mediterranean Sea?

As the new week dawned, passengers deemed vulnerable on the two ships including women and children were allowed to disembark, yet 250 remained in a state of limbo on the vessels.

Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi said those who did not qualify as vulnerable would have to leave Italian waters and should be taken care of by the “flag state”.

Yet one of the ships is refusing to leave the port of Catania “until all survivors rescued from distress at sea have been disembarked”, said SOS Humanity, the German charity that operates the vessel.

Few doubt Meloni’s grit in facing a range of problems. Raised in a single-parent home in a humble Rome neighborhood, she embraced right-wing politics as a youth while many of her peers were sympathetic to the left. Leading a party that long had just a fraction of the popular vote, she persisted in an opposition role until fortunes changed and she was finally propelled to the very pinnacle of political power.

She will now need all the determination she can muster as Europe enters one of the most challenging winters in recent memory.

- Jon Van Housen and Mariella Radaelli are international veteran journalists based in Italy