Italy’s Hard-Right Leader Is Playing Nice, Mostly
The pragmatism of Giorgia Meloni has surprised many people around the world.
ROME — Before Italy elected the hard-right leader Giorgia Meloni, the left sounded “the alarm for Italian democracy.” The European Union braced for Italy to join ranks with Hungary and Poland to challenge the bloc’s values. Investors worried about markets.
But over 100 days into her tenure as prime minister, Ms. Meloni has proved less predictable. She has shown flashes of nationalist anger, prompting fears that an authoritarian turn remains around the corner. But she has also governed in a practical way. The unexpected ordinariness of her early days has vexed the European establishment and her Italian critics, prompting relief but also raising a quandary as to what extent the toned-down firebrand should be embraced.
Ms. Meloni has passed a measured budget, has had cordial meetings with E.U. leaders and has muted her invective against the bloc, migrants and elites. She has followed in the footsteps of her predecessor, Mario Draghi, seeking to modernize the country with E.U. pandemic recovery funds. In the first electoral test since her victory, the center-right crushed the left in regional elections on February 13.
Ms. Meloni has been “better than we expected,” said Enrico Letta, the center-left leader.
After she was elected in September, she became the leader of Italy’s most right-wing government since Mussolini. Her party, the Brothers of Italy, was born from the wreckage of Italy’s failed experiment with Fascism. In the opposition, she made common cause with Europe’s other hard-right leaders who have challenged Europe’s democratic values, like Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary. But if Ms. Meloni has proved to be something less than an Orban, the difference, analysts say, may be that Italy’s dependency on Europe has induced moderation.
Now Europe’s leaders have to decide whether to treat her like the verbal bomb thrower of the far right that she had been for decades or the responsible prime minister that she has acted like for months. Embracing her too closely risks legitimizing illiberal currents in Europe. Rejecting her might seem as if she were being punished for doing what was asked.
President Emmanuel Macron of France excluded Ms. Meloni from a recent dinner in Paris with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany. She fumed. But later, she seemed to try to speak for much of Europe, arguing that even if invited, she would have counseled against the meeting because not having all 27 European leaders in the room risked eroding the bloc’s unity and public support for Ukraine.
Still, last year, Mr. Draghi, an architect of Europe’s policy on Ukraine, accompanied the French and German leaders on a train to the Ukrainian capital.
“It is so clear that we had two pictures,” Mr. Letta said. “One last year on the train to Kyiv. And yesterday at the Élysée and the picture without Italy.”