2024-05-13 18:11:26
At the end of 2022 the president of Bavaria Markus Söder he harshly criticized Manfred Weber, his party colleague and group leader of the European People’s Party, for his political flirtation with Giorgia Meloni. But last Friday he himself went to Rome to meet her in an appointment “encouraged and organized” by Ursula von der Leyen.
Typical Söder twist?
Before the trip, the Bavarian State Chancellery and the prime minister underlined several times that it was a state visit, i.e. that the prime minister of the Land and not the president of the CSU would fly to Rome.
«Not a party visit», Söder remarked even before leaving Munich on a charter with a delegation of three people.
So why did he go there? Had Weber seen things in hindsight? No it does not. The meeting with the Prime Minister was necessary to “get an idea of who Mrs. Meloni is and how she thinks.
After all, Italy is “one of our places of desire. That doesn’t mean we fall into camaraderie, but there are common interests,” Söder told Bayerischer Rundfunk before boarding the plane.
The trip was also justified by the fact of understanding what the Italian Prime Minister’s positions were on the AfD, on Europe and geopolitics in general.
And there was a discussion to be had with what is in any case a reliable partner in foreign energy policy, including the NAHV (Hydrogen Valley) project, industrial interconnection, the issue of migrants and asylum procedures, and the burdensome issue of the dispute against Austria regarding the movement of trucks on the Brenner Pass with the blocks (Blockabfertigungen) imposed by Tyrol.
For this reason, Italy has taken Vienna to the European Court of Justice, which Bavaria welcomes, but there is always the project shared by Bavaria and South Tyrol for the slot system, with truck drivers having to book in advance the crossing of the Alps, which Rome could examine more thoroughly, without abandoning the judicial route.
However, there is another interpretation to give to the Bavarian Prime Minister’s visit to Meloni, and it lies behind a lens that is also photographic.
The trip gave Söder the photo opportunities he loves: those that see him alongside international heads of government. The one in Italy is his fifth trip abroad in the space of a few months.
In December he met the President of Israel, in March the Prime Minister in China, he was in Serbia and Sweden, and now in Rome, where in addition to photos with Meloni he took selfies with German tourists in Piazza di Spagna.
Is Bavaria becoming too narrow for him? This thesis was recently raised at home. Söder continues to work on an image of him as a possible chancellor, just as he did in 2020 when welcoming Angela Merkel to the island of Herrenchiemsee.
It’s a dream that he hasn’t yet put away. After all, he said it openly at the end of April on the talk show “Hart aber fair” when host Louis Klamroth asked him who the CDU/CSU chancellor candidate would be. CDU leader Friedrich Merz or himself, the leader of the CSU?
“It’s probably one of us,” replied the ambitious Bavarian politician slyly.
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2024-05-13 18:11:26