The three parties comprising the centre-right government in Italy could merge into a single party and, in the run-up to the 2024 European elections, unify the right in Brussels.
Forza Italia’s leader Silvio Berlusconi talked again about the chance to form a ‘single party’ from the three parties of the centre-right: Forza Italia, Matteo Salvini’s League, and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia.
“Ours is a united, credible coalition, made up of loyal relations between different political forces but capable of working together for almost thirty years. A coalition that could one day be a single party,” Berlusconi wrote on social media, proposing to take the American Republicans as a model.
If the three governing parties in Italy were to unite into a single party, that would also reopen the game in the European Parliament, where each is part of a different political family.
Forza Italia is in the European People’s Party (EPP), and the League in Identity and Democracy (ID), and Fratelli d’Italia joined the Conservatives and Reformists group, of which Giorgia Meloni is president.
“We are and will be the liberal, Christian, guarantorist centre that looks to Europe and the West, the centre of the European People’s Party, the largest political family in Europe, which we proudly represent in Italy,” Berlusconi wrote, referring to Forza Italia.
In the past, Salvini and Berlusconi spoke of a federation of right-wingers, a project that was then stalled given the ‘exploit’ of Fratelli d’Italia, which had no interest in joining two parties that were falling in the polls.
Both Forza Italia and the League have progressively lost consensus. According to the YouTrend/Agi Supermedia poll of 23 December, the League stands at 8.8%, while Forza Italia is at 6.4%. On the contrary, Fratelli d’Italia continues to grow and has reached 30.6%.
According to Fratelli d’Italia sources, as reported by Il Messaggero, if Meloni’s party “continues to grow or in any case does not stop its race, a process of inclusion will be automatic and natural.”
In Europe, on the other hand, the aim seems to be to ally with the Conservatives and the EPP, whose guarantor would be EU Affairs Minister Raffaele Fitto, a long-time MEP. According to this reconstruction, Identity and Democracy would remain outside.
Meloni’s party would aim to use the upcoming European elections to downsize the Socialist party, which has been severely weakened by the ‘Qatargate’ scandal involving several members of the Italian Democratic Party (Pd) in Brussels and the Vice-President of the European Parliament Eva Kaili, under investigation for corruption.
“The main conservative delegations have and will have very high percentages: from Vox in Spain to the Swedes, not to mention the Poles. Next time we will be many in Strasbourg too,” notes a member of Fratelli d’Italia.
(Federica Pascale | EURACTIV.it)
Source: euractiv.com
