Giorgia Meloni has emerged as a kingmaker for the EU – but will she turn to centre right or far right? | Giorgia Meloni

When she became Prime Minister of Italy in October 2022. Georgia Meloni it looked like Brussels’ worst nightmare. Until then, the fiery leader of the Brothers of Italy – a party with neo-fascist roots – seemed anything but friendly to the EU.

For years, railing against the bloc was Meloni’s stock in trade: the euro amounted to enslavement, the European Commission effectively a moneylender. “Demolish this EU!” she urged at the 2019 CPAC conservative conference in the US.

When she took office at the Palazzo Chigi, far-right parties across Europe hailed her victory, expecting the new leader in Rome to promote their nationalist agenda and join Hungary’s Viktor Orban in battling the Brussels bureaucracy.

To the surprise of many, she did not. Italy’s new prime minister has appeared, at least at first sight, to be a constructive European, partly because Italy billions needed in EU post-Covid recovery funds and partly (perhaps) because Meloni is playing a longer game.

After next weekend’s European elections, which are likely to see significantly more national-conservative and far-right MEPs in parliament, her influence – in the assembly and potentially on the executive – could be much greater.

Courted by both the resurgent, if deeply divided, hard right and the commission’s center-right president Ursula von der LeyenMeloni has emerged as a possible leader who could influence the EU’s direction on several key issues.

Even opponents admit it she played it smart. Her first foreign visit as Prime Minister was to Brussels, where she engaged positively. Since then, she has played an important role in reaching a long-awaited agreement on the reform of EU asylum rules. She traveled with von der Leyen three times to North Africa, signing agreements with Egypt and Tunisia to help slow the exodus of migrants.

Most importantly, Meloni offers consistent support for Ukraine and unfettered criticism of Russia. That alone sets her apart from the likes of France’s Marine Le Pen and other far-right figures traditionally friendly to Moscow. And she was invaluable in helping Hungary join, becoming known as “Orbán’s whisperer”.

All this has endeared her to von der Leyen, who, given the expected increase in hard-right representation in parliament, may need the votes of some of them to secure a second five-year term.

Von der Leyen’s centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) is set to remain the largest in parliament, followed by the centre-left Socialists and Democrats and the liberal Renew group, but not all MEPs in this grand mainstream coalition will support it.

She has repeatedly ruled out working with some radical right-wing parties, such as Le Pen’s National Unity, Geert Wilders’ Dutch Freedom Party or Austria’s FPÖ, all of whom participate in the far-right parliamentary group Identity and Democracy. But she is comfortable working with Meloni and some other members of the rival, more mainstream European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR). “I work very well with Georgia Meloni,” who is “obviously pro-European,” Von der Leyen said.

That prompted the Socialists, Liberals and Greens, who fear that Meloni could demand softening of EU climate measures in exchange for support, to warn that they would torpedo von der Leyen’s re-election if she cuts far-right deals.

Then the head of the commission may be faced with a choice. But so will Meloni. For two years it has been a paragon of integrity on the EU stage as it waged its culture wars – against independent journalism, same-sex parents and LGBTQ+ rights – at home. As one EU diplomat put it, Meloni “may have come across as a pragmatist, but she is a politician with convictions – and her policies are still firmly right”.

As if to emphasize this fact, she spoke (online) at a ‘great patriotic convention’ in Madrid last month.

Le Pen, subsequently supported by Orbán, last week he called for Italy’s prime minister to unite European nationalist and far-right forces in a parliamentary “supergroup”. Given their intense factional rivalry, especially over Ukraine, this is highly unlikely.

But some constellation of national-conservative ECR parties that might be acceptable to much of von der Leyen’s center-right EPP is certainly possible, at least on some big issues, and such a constellation would clearly be led by Meloni. So far she has kept her powder dry, refusing to speculate about an alliance with von der Leyen or Le Pen, but has spoken openly about “changing the European picture” and “building a different majority in the European Parliament”.

If he can build a bridge between Europe’s conservatives and at least some of its hard right, Meloni could bring about a fairly radical change in the EU’s direction – on such vital issues as climate change, enlargement and immigration. Maybe that’s her plan.