«This is where decisions are made»- Corriere.it

we are atone at nightThursday night. All 27 EU leaders are tired. They want to close. Giorgia Meloni, however, wants to confirm the 8 amendments that she has prepared to modify the latest version of the conclusions of the European Council. An extra word, a sentence formulated differently, a more or less appropriate verb, they are all changes that are indispensable for her and which concern the paragraph dedicated to migrants.

At one point he is the president of the European Council, Charles Michel, which encourages her to be accommodating, to go faster. After all, there are not only the Italian amendments on chapter migrantsthere are dozens more on state aidpresented by almost all the leaders present. You risk making the dawn. The Prime Minister, according to European sources, remains within a track of determination that makes some lose a pinch of patience and others arouses recognition for her firmness: «Dear Charles, the haste technique in the direction of works I know her very wellI also used it during the night meetings on the Italian financial law, but for me there are some essential points,
you can go to sleep if you want…».

Eventually the heads of state and government close down the Council at three in the morning. Despite some moments of tension, the chapter dedicated to migrants is judged by Giorgia Meloni as an “absolute novelty”, a change of pace she will say in front of reporters at the press conference yesterday morning. In any case, beyond the various evaluations on the goodness of the result, it is certainly the result of a comparison which also has other moments somehow extraordinary. And one of these is precisely with Macron. He too is in a hurry. At one point, the French president takes the floor to say that in many cases the amendments concern topics that had already been discussed and closed in the previous days, in the preparatory meetings of the Council, among the ambassadors of the 27: «It doesn’t seem to me that we can reopen that which had been agreed in Coreper…’.

The reaction of the Italian premier is told by European diplomatic sources as follows: “Emmanuel, maybe I didn’t quite understand how it works this Council, but if I’m not mistaken here we are in a political forum above the level of Coreper and it is here that we take decisions, therefore…’. In short, there were also other sparks between the two leaders during the night negotiations of the summit, and on a matter that Meloni will comment on in front of reporters, claiming a personal success: «The result of the excellent work of our diplomacy, but also of the many contacts I had in the previous hours and of a political position that I defended».

Yet it is still she who publicly denies the narrative, which she considers simplistic, of a frost with the head of France. There is a shot that portrays her next to Macron, her with pursed lips, motionless, in a mimicry that appears to mark a distance: “I have not seen this photo – says Meloni, making fun of the frown portrayed in the image – but, gentlemen folks, we were there five minutes. A minute earlier Emmanuel Macron and I shook hands in front of the same photographers. We smiled: afterwards we were chatting with Xavier Bettel, the prime minister of Luxembourg, about I don’t remember what holiday he was having in France. Everything can be told, but they are normal relationships. Everyone defends his interestsI mine, Scholz his, and Macron too, of course, his».

At three o’clock in the morning the Council ends, almost all the leaders hold a press conference immediately afterwards, then leave Brussels. Only Meloni stays to sleep, the meeting with the media is organized the next morning. First, our delegation asked for a room in the hotel where the Prime Minister sleeps, then the Belgian authorities were asked if they could leave the building adjacent to the summit open. Scholz and Macron also slept in the hotel, where there is no room for all the reporters. One in the presidential suite, the other in the slightly lower second suite. Meloni only has a large rooma kind of junior suites. The classes, the ones you mentioned, are at the Amigo hotel.