«But in Spain there is a yes to Vox»- Corriere.it

FROM OUR REPORTER
MADRID – There are red lines that the EPP does not intend to cross when it thinks of alliances in the next EU Parliament. These stakes are also valid at national and local level. EPP partners must be pro EU, pro Ukraine, pro rule of law and pro NATO. Above all, the doors are closed to those who are pro-Russian.
The proposal by the leader of the Lega Matteo Salvini for an alliance in Strasbourg of the right and the centre-right cannot disregard European values ​​for the popular parties.

In Spain, at the local level, the EPP has already formed alliances with the far-right Vox party and this could happen even after July 23, when the Policies will be there. But the far right is not the same everywhere explains Antonio Lpez-Istriz White, secretary of the EPP for twenty years until May 2022: It must be clear that French and German politics are different from Italian and Spanish ones. The parties of Marine Le Pen and Alternative for Germany are not like the League, which has made a government pact along a non-anti-European line. The Rassemblement National and AfD are anti-European forces, there can be no alliance with them. Vox, on the other hand, is not a Eurosceptic party, it criticizes the Brussels system and bureaucracy but does not deny its membership of the EU. At European level, the same rule applies to Lpez-Istriz White. Each country has its own history. If we look at Rome, many votes from Forza Italia, the ancient DC, in the past went to the League and recently to the Brothers of Italy, but they are not anti-European voters. Above all, he concludes, after the European elections the EPP will remain the force with the most votes according to the polls. Collaborations will be with pro-European forces that accept EU values.

The further north you go, the more the national delegations of the EPP are against an alliance with the extreme right. In Germany not even an option. And so in Poland, where EPP candidate Donald Tusk, former president of the European Council, will challenge the outgoing far-right prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki, a member of Pis (Law and Justice) and a friend of Giorgia Meloni, in the autumn. The Pis has decided to radicalize the electoral campaign, also dragging Germany into the fray. A move that also pushes the president of the EPP Manfred Weber to greater caution regarding a possible alliance with Giorgia Meloni. Much will depend on how much the Italian premier will spend on Morawiecki.

Last Sunday the leader of the PIS Jarosław Kaczynski asked the Civic Platform, the formation of Tusk, to withdraw from the EPP or to demand Weber’s resignation. Morawiecki went further: In the east we see the Wagner Group which is about to move to Belarus – he said – while in the west the “Weber Group”, Weber-Tusk, is active. This is the European leader of Tusk’s party. And the German leader says that the migration policy must be adopted, also by Poland, because he must lighten Germany’s burden. To understand the direction that the alliances will take, it may be useful to recall the words of the president of the EU Parliament Roberta Metsola of the EPP:

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