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The victory of the Italian center-right (CDX) coalition at the 2022 political elections had been a foregone conclusion for months, if not years. Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy (FDI) had, likewise, long been projected to lead the coalition. In November 2021, FDI clearly surpassed Salvini’s League in the polls. From then onwards, the gap in popular consensus between the two sovereigntist parties continued to grow.

Despite these trends, FDI’s victory was still met with a sense of incredulity. The idea that the “heir” of the post-fascist Italian Social Movement would become the leader of a coalition government continued to appear, despite projections, somewhat unbelievable. International news agencies saw Meloni’s victory as a possible return of fascist ideology to Italy (the American site Politico announced the results with the title: “Italy on track to elect most right-wing government since Mussolini”). Moreover, Meloni’s triumph was also the first for a right-wing populist party in a major European power. FDI, in this sense, has achieved what its Spanish, French, and German counterparts have failed to do. Moreover, it has done so in a critical moment for the stability of the “West”.

The first “institutional” signs that followed the elections incapsulated such worries. The French Prime Minister Borne has said herself “attentive” to Italy’s future with regards to human rights issues, while, the day after the vote, Spread indicators reached 236 points.  The risks ahead appeared clear: a FDI-led Italy may further threaten the EU’s balance in favour of the populist front, so far only composed by lesser economic powers, and simultaneously fracture the pro-Ukraine bloc at a crucial moment in the crisis.

Giorgia Meloni has, on her part, shown herself extremely aware of such developments. In the past months, she has tried to prove such worries completely unfounded. On one side, Meloni sees reducing international mistrust – especially Washington’s – as crucial to implement her political programme at home, as it would lessen foreign pressures on her government. On the other, Meloni also hopes that, by demonstrating her alignment with NATO and the US, she will be able to reverse some of Mario Draghi’s more ambitious foreign policy proposals, fracturing the France-led European bloc in favour of a greater room for maneuver under a transatlantic status quo.

 

Conciliatory Politics

Meloni’s campaign to reassure Italy’s partners abroad started long before the elections. FDI’s leader has spent years building a process of rapprochement towards the institutions of the Anglo-American “establishment”. If, during the period of greatest growth of Italian populism (which reached its zenith at the 2018 elections, where FDI only obtained 4% of the total vote), Meloni adhered to the political project sponsored by Steve Bannon – who saw Italy as the ideal “laboratory” for his international populist front – the party’s recent growth in the polls has led to an important re-alignment.

In 2019, as FDI doubled its polling numbers, Meloni travelled to Washington to speak at CPAC, the annual conference of the American Conservative Union – one of the country’s main Republican lobbies. Meloni’s speech, in that occasion, also included a direct endorsement of Juan Guaidó’s claim to Venezuela’s presidency. The remark, apparently unrelated to the broader content of Meloni’s speech, is particularly relevant as it constituted an indirect response to the recent abstention of the PD and M5S’s representatives at the Euro-Parliament vote concerning the Union’s position regarding Guaidó’s claims. At the time, the mass-abstention, combined with the perceived “sympathy” of the Conte I government towards Moscow, had significantly worried Washington. Consequently, in openly supporting the American line, Meloni already began to state what is, now, her government’s main principle in foreign policy matters: “FDI can be trusted”. 

Despite the end of Trump’s presidency, Meloni has recently returned to CPAC. In her latest speech, delivered last February in Orlando, Florida, Meloni has announced her support for Ukraine’s resistance, while simultaneously decrying the possibility of one day seeing an “occupied” Taiwan. This last remark may be a nod of approval towards the Biden administration, which has increasingly distanced itself from its predecessors’ doctrine of “strategic ambiguity”, and towards an acceptance of Taiwan’s independence. Furthermore, days before the elections, Adolfo Urso – former head of the COPASIR (the organ ensuring Parliament’s control over the secret service) and current Minister for Economic Development, and FDI’s fundamental contact with Washington – travelled to the US to meet, in addition to individuals from the think tank world, former NATO ambassador, Kurt Volker, with the goal of reiterating the party’s support for the White House’s positions, especially regarding China and Russia.

Urso’s visit to the US can also be considered a somewhat “defensive” move. In fact, Urso’s assurances also sought to defuse the contemporary US State Department dossier on the acceptance of Russian funds by European parties. In this case, Urso strongly reiterated Italy’s – and FDI’s in particular – extraneity from the allegations. The general “feeling”, however, is that of a not-too-veiled warning to the League. Salvini’s party still remains the greatest “weak point” for FDI’s political programme. On one side, it is obvious that the Lega remains fundamental for the government’s survival, as it is the second party of the coalition. On the other, the “green-yellow” (League-Movimento 5 Stelle) government’s unreliable foreign policy line, combined with Salvini’s electoral campaign statements – which questioned the utility of sanctions against Russia – are seen by Meloni as problematic for the objective of proving Italy’s reliability.

The recent electoral results, with FDI obtaining almost three times more votes than its ally, have somewhat “cooled” the risk of foreign policy-related clashes within the coalition. They also solidify Meloni’s control over the Farnesina – the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. However, such risks have not yet disappeared. Because of this, Meloni has continued and accelerated her campaign in the months following the vote, through her declarations and speeches. Moreover, rumours of a potential official trip to the United Kingdom have been circulating since August. The visit, which may materialise in the next months, at the height of the energy prices crisis, may help Meloni reinsure another important non-EU ally, while simultaneously building stronger ties with the investors and bankers of the City of London.

Here, it is interesting to note how FDI’s diplomatic moves do not operate a significant distinction in terms of “right wing” and “left wing” when it comes to foreign interlocutors. Non-ideological negotiations and relationship-building appears fundamental in the context of Italy’s past “mistakes” in terms of foreign policy and public diplomacy, such as the previously mentioned EU parliament vote on Venezuela. It is important to note that, although the “Trump wing” already dominates a significant portion of the GOP’s electorate, the recent midterm elections have proven that the Neoconservatives – the post-Reagan “establishment” Republicans, traditionally supportive of an interventionist, anti-isolationist and pro-NATO orientation – retain important influence within the party. Despite significant differences in terms of domestic policies, this wing of the Republicans have historically been more open to dialogue – and, to some extent, “alignment” – with the moderate members of the Democratic Party, a loose, but majoritarian, group which includes Biden.

 

A High Stakes Game

The attention that Meloni continues to pay to the policymaking elites of the Anglo-American world is likewise fundamental for her political programme in the immediate future, with regards to both domestic and international dynamics. In terms of the former, it is directly dedicated to facilitate the implementation of the reforms that the center-right has promised. The possible future meeting with key figures of the City of London, described by La Stampa, aims to preemptively protect Italian markets, solidifying certainties concerning the viability of the measures directed at lessening the impacts of the energy crisis, and on the economic measures mentioned in the state budget. Furthermore, managing to dissociate the government’s programme from the uncertainties of Conte I may be seen by Meloni as a way to reduce international pressures and opposition directed at controversial proposals, such as the abrogation or revision of the crime of torture, and the application of draconian measures against NGOs operating migrant rescue missions in the Mediterranean.

Still, the “Atlantic” strategy adopted by Meloni remains more evidently important from a foreign policy standpoint, and particularly in the context of the future of Italy’s position in Europe. Indeed, it is primarily in this area that Meloni wants to break with her predecessor. Draghi had opted to maintain Italy in its traditionally pro-Washington position; however, his presidency had seen a return to primacy of the European integration project. In November 2021, the ratification of the “Trattato del Quirinale” – a document, in itself, relatively empty of concrete policies and measures – was an important signal of Rome’s willingness to support France’s advocacy, strongly linked to Macron, of the development of a unitary defence and foreign policy at the European level. The inauguration of a Rome-Paris axis, after years of diplomatic tensions between the two neighbouring states, was also seen as a potential counterweight to the dominant intra-EU Franco-German partnership, and as a possible return to the long-standing project (which has de facto remained incomplete for decades) of a “southern” relocation of the EU’s center of power, involving a Mediterranean-focused foreign policy open to stronger assertiveness (and conflict) with Turkey and other regional middle powers.

Meloni, at the contrary, has long seen France as Italy’s strategic adversary. First, from the energy standpoint, especially in Africa and in the context of the regional Eni-Total competition. Second, Meloni still sees Paris as too tied to Berlin, making France an unreliable partner in the Mediterranean. For these reasons, the favouring of the American alliance, united with the advocacy for the rise of a “Europe of nations” – independent entities from a foreign policy standpoint – are essentially directed at the reconfiguration of the Union’s internal balance. A privileged position vis-à-vis the US would grant Meloni, albeit with a necessary degree of caution, a wider room for negotiation (and conflict) with regards to Brussels, Paris, and Berlin, especially in the crucial North-Africa area.

In this context, the recent British proposals for reneging the framework of the European Court for Human Rights – measures that have been strongly supported by the past Conservative administrations as a possible response to the unresolved issue of the illegal Channel crossings on the part of migrants – appear fundamental. Such proposals may be taken by the Italian government as a sign that London will be less prone to challenge Rome on fundamentally “ideological” issues, such as those regarding migrants, policing, and security, which the center-right coalition cannot afford to abandon. This, combined with Washington’s post-Obama reticence in intruding in European’s internal affairs, may make the Anglo-American counterweight even more appealing to Meloni’s government.

 

Indirect Impacts and Implications

All these trends, which have been confirmed in the first actions taken by the Meloni government in the last few weeks, highlight the importance of Washington and London for the Prime Minister. Of course, Meloni’s programme is not at all new: Berlusconi had already sought to separate Rome from Brussels and Paris by getting closer to Washington. However, Italy can today rely upon a greater weakness, both at the structural and ideological levels, of the European Union, in addition to a much more polarized and unstable international system. If it were to succeed, Meloni’s foreign policy would allow for greater freedom to navigate these “fractures”. At the same time, it remains a strategy fraught with tensions and weaknesses, mainly depending on the fragility of the center-right coalition

Finally, a possible success of Meloni’s conciliatory efforts may have broader, spill-over effects on parties that resemble FDI. Although the great, pan-European populist movement imagined by Bannon never took form, the recent electoral results in Hungary, Sweden and France demonstrate that right-wing populists are still on the rise. Likewise, the relative failures of Spain’s Vox and France’s Rassemblement National continue to be linked to generalised fears of a sudden break with the institutional and international status quo. Meloni is not the first leader to try to dispel these fears, aiming to demonstrate her party’s alignment with the status quo. Le Pen, long before the last French electoral campaign, had already abandoned her more Eurosceptic positions, retaining instead a purely “cultural” sovereignist that can be compared to FDI’s. Still, FDI’s support for Washington’s positions, even on more relatively peripheral issues for Italy’s national interest (such as the question of Taiwan’s sovereignty), is potentially unprecedented, especially in Western Europe. If Meloni manages, through her policy choices, to actually separate her image as a populist from the traditional worries presented by foreign observers, FDI may simultaneously become an example for other European populists, and contribute to their normalisation by reassuring foreign electorates regarding the risks of “anti-establishment” voting.

 

 

 

Autore dell’articolo*: Manfredi Pozzoli, BA in History & International Relations presso King’s College London, studente di Master in Diplomacy & International Governance a Sciences Po e London School of Economics.

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