The sense of Renzi and Calenda’s dialogue with Meloni. “We distinguish ourselves from the Pd and M5s, and on the Mes the right can go haywire”

The meeting at Palazzo Chigi. Convergences on Citizenship Income and Businesses. The tensions on the Pnrr: “If I criticize it, you attack me”, complains the prime minister. But it is precisely on European issues that the leaders of the Third Pole want to make the government fibrillate. “On the Mes we are relaunching everything”, says the boss of Iv. And in the Chamber on the bailout fund, the majority is already anxious

At one point the roles were even reversed. Carlo Calenda to be a sovereignist: “If we wait for von der Leyen on energy, we are fresh. Who cares about the Commission”. And Giorgia Meloni who rolled her eyes: “Let it be recorded that the Third Pole is anti-European”. The price cap was discussed, and the proposal, put forward by the delegation of Action and Italia viva, to divert the 18 billion allocated for tax credits to companies to a national plan of decouplingto lower electricity costs. All under the perplexed gaze of Giancarlo Giorgetti, who shook his head: “In Brussels they won’t let us do it”. But it was a moment. Then, for the entire duration of the meeting, an hour and a half of talks, Europe once again became the proverbial place of confrontation between the prime minister and her opponents in dialogue, but all according to script. And in fact, as soon as Calenda mentioned the word “Mes”, the FdI boss hurried to stop him: “No, we don’t even talk about it”.