Meloni hears Abascal, the defeated “friend”. Vox’s stop in Spain weighs on European ambitions – Corriere.it

«Giorgia, do you hear this Vox?», he wrote Matthew Renzi in his analysis of the Spanish vote. Literally, the answer is yes. After midnight yesterday, Giorgia Meloni picked up the phone and called her friend Santiago Abascal, the leader of the Spanish ultra-right who came out less than a cardinal in the electoral round that should have consecrated him pope. The cold shower on the ambitions of the right to seal a government led by a popular exponent is already on record in Spain. If it was supposed to be a test to re-propose the scheme in Brussels, well, the test is failed miserably.

Meloni and Abascal don’t talk about this. In the phone callwhich lasts just a few minutes also because the leader of Vox is stunned by the reversal in the face between the first exit polls and the final result, the Italian prime minister reassure your friend on FdI’s support for the cause of the Vox leader, rather than Vox itself. Not a chat about future balances, therefore; if anything, the certificate of human and political closeness of the FdI leader to a friend who now he risks his job after having practically played the same game as him, almost at the same times (Abascal left the People’s Party to found Vox in 2014, Meloni had carried out the same operation two years earlier) but with opposite results.

The day after the Spanish vote, in Italy, the very wide field of those who, once they belong to the opposition, just can’t stay together, regrouped by half a second. For one day they practically all say the same thing, or almost. From Elly Schlein (“The black wave can stop”) a Matthew Renzi (“We don’t know who won but we know who lost: Vox. You don’t win elections against Europe”), from Charles Calenda (“I’m happy for Vox’s defeat”) to Giuseppe Conte (“Vox’s bluff revealed”), from Nicola Fratoianni (“Stop the black wave of Meloni’s friends”) a Pier Ferdinando Casini («Palazzo Chigi and the government should clearly examine the results»). Forza Italia just rejoices in the government, with the Azzurri claiming the success of their Spanish cousins ​​with whom they share the area of ​​the Brussels hemicycle. “The EPP, which also represents the center of politics in Spain,” he writes Antonio Tajani — it is good news for Europe.’

They stay Melons and Salvini, who had challenged each other on the point of foil on the strategy for the immediate post-European Championships. The second by demanding a kind of early signing of the pact for an enlarged coalition also a Marine Le Pen, a sort of right-center tandem driven by the former; the first by insisting on the design of an alliance that starts from the agreement between the EPP and the conservatives, well aware of the impossibility of the Popolari (starting with Forza Italia) to get to shake hands with Le Pen and the Germans of theafd.

In the prime minister’s inner circle, future repercussions of the Spanish vote are denied. One of Meloni’s most listened to party colleagues says that the «situation is different from the Italian caseWhy popular and Vox argued during the election campaign to arrive united after the government, and the little game failed; while the Italian center-right will face the round of the European elections having to be careful not to give backlash to a government that already exists”. But the setback of a practically twin party is on record and it is no small feat. It also applies to Salviniwhich at this point sees the hypothesis of the right shipwrecked—center imagined in June. Even if, among the Northern League, there are those who hope that the right will emerge strengthened from this stalemate in Spain. He said it, not too between the lines, the eurosceptic Claudio Borghi attacking Feijóo’s too centrist profile: «Keep note from a European point of view. Being picky gets you nowhere.”

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