He who did not seem in a hurry to see her was the first foreign leader to meet Giorgia Meloni. Emmanuel Macron met the new Italian Prime Minister on Sunday evening, on the sidelines of a trip devoted to a forum for peace organized by the Catholic community Sant’Egidio and an audience with Pope Francis this Monday at the Vatican.
The meeting with the leader of the post-fascist Brothers of Italy party, now at the head of the most right-wing government in Italian history since the end of the second world war and the fall of Mussolini, seemed surrounded by a certain embarrassment on the French side. The entourage of the Head of State waited until the very last moment to confirm this meeting, the place of which was not even specified: “In the center of Rome”, merely indicates the Elysée. In any case not at the Chigi Palace (the Italian Matignon), while Giorgia Meloni had nevertheless been invested the same morning, receiving from his predecessor Mario Draghi the famous bell used to regulate the debates in the Council of Ministers. “It took time to set up the technical arrangements to courteously accept Ms. Meloni’s invitation to this informal meeting”, justifies the Macron team.
Similarly, we had to wait several hours after its conclusion to know the content of this first head-to-head. The Meloni team quickly published a press release reporting an interview “lasting more than an hour, certainly informal, but cordial and fruitful, going around the main European issues”, starting with support for the ‘Ukraine.
A “frank and open” discussion, according to the Elysée
Elysian collaborators prefer to speak of a “frank and open” discussion. Clearly, Emmanuel Macron, who unlike Chancellor Scholz, European Commission boss Ursula von der Leyen or President Biden, did not congratulate the new leader upon her appointment, but waited until the end of the meeting last night. to publish a press release, will judge by action and remain vigilant.
After Meloni’s victory in the legislative elections of September 25, Elisabeth Borne and her Secretary of State for European Affairs, Laurence Boone, had indeed called on Italy to respect “the values and rules of the rule of law”. Which had irritated the Italian side, where they castigated a “threat of interference”, but Macron’s entourage did not specify whether the subject was discussed during the one-on-one. One certainty, Ms. Meloni has confirmed her support for Ukraine and her commitment to act within NATO, while her ally and Deputy Prime Minister, the very Francophobic and Eurosceptic Matteo Salvini, is resolutely pro-Putin.
And now ?
Although the details of the interview were not revealed on Sunday, it emerges in particular that on the crucial issue of energy, the new Prime Minister is “in support and in alliance with France” on the need for a capping the price of gas and setting up European solidarity instruments on energy.
And then ? It is up to Giorgia Meloni to decide, it is up to her to specify her choices during a future visit to Paris, insists the Elysée. Why in this sense, and not yesterday in Rome? Because it is up to a new leader to decide the order and pace of her first European trips, which will be very revealing. Will she choose Paris where her far-right label gets in the way – despite the first pledges she gave in Brussels with the appointment of pro-Europeans to key ministries? Or more unusual destinations like Poland and Hungary, two Eurosceptic powers to which she is very close?
“Relations between peoples are more important than those between leaders,” Macron reportedly told Italian journalists after the interview. The transalpine press published in any case the photo of a rather formal handshake between the two (with a Meloni however more smiling than his host). Far from the Macron-Merkel accolades…