Here's how Meloni wants to approach the EPP, without haste or announcements, after the Romanian lesson

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“Everyone is crazy about Giorgia,” headlined the Times yesterday. But perhaps the problem is precisely that “everyone” that at an international level becomes too many, forcing the leader, sooner or later, to a choice especially in Europe where her party, Ecr, has become a political “non-place”. Almost irrelevant. And so here is the question that is being asked in the corridors of FdI: join the EPP? For Meloni it could be an almost obligatory path, hoped for by those within her party who are animated by long-term thoughts. The embrace with Vox (then switched to the Patriots), the choices on the presidential elections in Poland and Romania bring back to the center the usefulness of the Ecr container, used in a phase to escape the sanitary cordon in Brussels and now without prospects.

Is there a goal of landing in the EPP? Not for now, but if the prime minister were to win the next elections, there are those who do not rule it out. On the contrary. Giorgia Meloni is against laboratory operations, is allergic to advice from the salons and fears being overtaken on the right (by the League). At the same time, with the force of facts, in recent years she has begun a path, not a little bumpy, that could bring her into the family of the European People's Party. "Me the new Merkel? Better the new Thatcher, if I can choose", she jokes when someone presents these scenarios to her.

It is no mystery, for example, that today the prime minister has built an excellent human and political relationship with three German personalities such as the German chancellor Friedrich Merz, the president of the commission Ursula von der Leyen and the president of the EPP Manfred Weber who, every time he happens to be in Italy to meet Antonio Tajani, his deputy, always finds a way to see her. They seem like a jumble of details, but when put together they give a nuance to the ongoing relationships between the leaders of the conservatives and the moderate world that looks to the right. What could a change of direction by the prime minister of a G7 country lead to in Europe? Certainly to greater centrality. Certainly, the signs of a rapprochement with the EPP surpass those of the pursuit of the Orban-Salvi-Lepenist Patriots, which often exists, even if with ultimately not exactly enthusiastic results. If we retrace Meloni's European film backwards, we can cite a series of fairly important stages. Small pebbles.

The first was the no to the large group with Id (now Patriots) of the Conservatives for example. When the then leader of Fratelli d'Italia did not participate in the Warsaw summit and blew the bank. Then in the last European legislature there was a significant vote: the one for the election of Roberta Metsola as president of the European Parliament after the death of David Sassoli. That is, the choice - under the direction of Raffaele Fitto - to enter a very large majority in support of the Maltese representative of the EPP. On that occasion - it was January 2022 - the ECR group also won a vice-presidency. Ten months later, Meloni will become Prime Minister and in her first trip to Brussels as Prime Minister in one day she will manage to meet and ease tensions with the President of the Commission Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Council, the liberal Charles Michel as well as Metsola (another side in the Eurocamera, with whom she will meet on Tuesday in Bologna at the initiative of Confindustria). A modern and respected right, without the stigma of unpresentability on its body and in the control room: this is what the evolution of Ecr, of which Meloni was president until last December, was and is for. That is, after having brought home the executive vice-presidency of the Commission with Fitto, the most moderate of the group (more at ease with Weber than with Simion) plus two vice-presidencies of the European Parliament. In the contradictions of European politics, it is also worth noting the entry of Carlo Fidanza and Antonio Giordano, top leaders of Ecr, into Idu. That is, the international center-right alliance, moreover with roles as vice-presidents. In this assembly, for example, there is also Deborah Bergamini, one of Tajani's deputies in Forza Italia. Small movements that would push Meloni towards a marked path in Europe. Not today and not even tomorrow. But the surprise could come in the event of an encore at Palazzo Chigi. There is time. Simone Canettieri

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