“Never with the right”. “No to vetoes” Tajani-Salvini, dispute over EU-Corriere.it alliances

Antonio Tajani’s no and the great maneuvers on Europe. Yesterday Matteo Salvini met Marine Le Pen. Not in person as had been announced, not in Rome as expected: the incandescent situation in the French suburbs held back the leader of the Rassemblement national in France. And so the confrontation between the Italian deputy prime minister and the aspiring French president was via videoconference.

But yesterday Tajani’s dry halt arrived, coordinator of Forza Italia as well as vice president of the European People’s Party: «With Salvini we are ready to make alliances in Italy and outside. The problem has never been and never will be Matteo Salvini and the League ». But the problem exists, continues the leading exponent of the EPP in Italy: «The problem is Alternative für Deutschland and Mrs. Le Pen’s party. They are anti-Europeans. How do you govern Europe with those who are against Europe?». The former president of the European Parliament recalls that he “personally created an agreement between conservatives, popular and liberals: this is the agreement on which to focus”. Tajani does not mention Salvini’s request to the allies for a written pact for the center-right in Europe. But he goes on to the ultimate consequence of the premises: «There is an incompatibility not only with Forza Italia but with the family of the European People’s Party. So neither FI nor the EPP can make agreements with them».

Salvini first gets the two Northern League leaders to respond in Europe, Marco Campomenosi and Marco Zanni: “Does my friend Tajani really prefer to continue governing with the Democratic Party, the Socialists and Macron?” Then, however, at the end of the face-to-face with Le Pen – she, with a green jacket that looks a bit like a Lega supporter from yesteryear – replies in the first person, but as if he were addressing the French leader: «The League will never go with the left and the socialists and I do not accept vetoes on our allies». For the secretary of the Northern League «the only hope of changing Europe is to keep together all that is alternative to the left. Anyone who behaves differently is doing the socialists a favor.’ Recalling that Le Pen embodies “the only center-right present in a large country like France”. All while Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni – who al Courier he said that “there are no negotiations in progress” — he is preparing to fly to Warsaw for a seminar of his group, Ecr, in Europe a direct competitor of the Northern League ID.

In short, the confrontation that will form the figured bass of Italian politics until the European Championships next June is already producing the first sparks. Salvini’s stated goal is “to create the first historic centre-right government, as opposed to the left of taxes and wild immigration”, but to date the construction of “a common house of the centre-right alternative to the socialists, without vetoes” remains complicated. . For this Salvini has proposed a “written pact” to the allies. But that doesn’t seem to be the order of the day. In the League, Tajani’s statements, while not unpredictable, have aroused more than a bad mood: “Berlusconi was a federator, Tajani excludes” snorts a colonel. Among the Salvinians – who cite a lot the new star of the Spanish EPP Isabel Díaz Ayuso – the conviction is that the popular will not be able to remain firm in the veto on Le Pen even for a “simple calculation”: “The Rassemblement national is in fact the center-right in France. Vetoes like those of Tajani would deprive the people of a large and decisive country”.

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