The Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloniaspires to victory in the european electionsscheduled for next Sunday and in which their formation, Brothers of Italy, could be around 27% of the votesaccording to the main polls, which also give it around 25 seats in the European Parliament.
Brothers of Italywhich in the last elections in 2019 obtained 6.4% of the votes and five seats, is now emerging as the great winner with Meloni seeking to assert her policies in Italy to make the big leap to Europe and try to condition community policies from Strasbourg and Brussels.
Meloni has stood out in Italy for his sovereignist policies, with a marked character anti-immigration. In recent weeks it has become the center of attention of the electoral campaign because the European People’s Party (EPP) has left the door for a possible rapprochement.
Brothers of Italy He is part of the parliamentary group of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR)—to which VOX also belongs—and in fact in these elections it aims to surpass the Law and Justice party, now ousted from the Polish government, in seats and become the main formation of the bloc.
Meloni, like most of Italy’s political leaders, appears as head of the listalthough it is more than likely that they will renounce their MEP status as they cannot combine it with the position of national deputy.
The social democrats aspire to repeat results
After Brothers of Italy, the surveys place the Democratic party (PD), with a social democratic profile and who in recent years has been removed from positions of power, although it is true that in the 2014 European elections he managed, with Matteo Renzi as a candidate, gather just over 40% of the votes.
Now the social democratic candidacy remains in the hands of Elly SchleinMEP in the last legislature, and who became known in 2015 for participating in the ‘Occupy PD’ mobilization, when young activists took over the party headquarters to demand that the party make a radical change in its policies.
However, that mobilization did not achieve the expected results for the young people who participated in it and a few months later several of them, including Schelin, disaffiliated from the party. After several years in the progressive Posible and also the environmentalists of Italia Verde, returned to the PD in 2022.
In the last elections in 2019, the PD achieved 22.7% of the votes (19 seats) with Nicola Zingaretti as head of the list. Now They aspire to revalidate that second position with figures almost identical to those of four years ago.
Followed by the social democrats is the 5 Star Movement (M5E), which with former Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte (2018-2021) aspires to revalidate the 17% of votes and the 14 seats from the last elections. The polls give them a similar number of MEPs, although with a few percentage points less.
While Meloni’s Brothers of Italy claim to be the big winners of the elections, the Liga de Matteo Salvini could be seen in the opposite scenario. The party swept the 2019 elections with just over 34% of the votes and 29 seats in the European Parliament.
Member of parliamentary group Identity and Democracy (ID)—to which Marine Le Pen’s National Group belongs—Salvini managed to make Liga the Italian party with the most seats in the entire European Parliament.
Now the polls place him in the middle of the fight with Forza Italia for fourth place in the European elections with just 8.5% of the votes and estimates of between seven and eight seats.
Salvini has repeatedly advocated a coalition of the EPP with ID and ECR to unseat the Socialists and Democrats (S&D) and the liberals of Renew (RE)who are currently at the head of the European Commission together with the ‘popular’.
Main figures as candidates
One of the peculiarities of the European elections in Italy is the string of illustrious personalities who usually present themselves as heads of the list. On this occasionThe Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister will appear on the ballots.and the leaders of the rest of the formations, mostly deputies.
According to the regulations of the European Union, There are several positions that are incompatible with being a member of the European Parliament, such as being a member of a Government or a member of a national Parliament.. In order to collect the minutes, you cannot be an active official of the European institutions either.
The estimates grant all candidates representation in the European Parliament, so It is more than likely that Meloni, Salvini, Tajani and company will resign from their membership as community deputies to continue leading their respective positions in the Italian Government.