European elections: Giorgia Meloni gets personal with Italy’s vote

Italians will start voting on Saturday afternoon on the third of four days of European elections in which citizens in 27 countries will choose members of the next European Parliament.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni hopes the result will tighten its grip on Italian politics. She even urged voters to “just write Georgia” on their ballots.

Most European Union countries vote on Sunday, after a tumultuous few weeks in which two European leaders and several other politicians were physically attacked.

Leaders across Europe were united in shock over the latest attack, in the middle of an election involving 373 million potential European voters.

Last month, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico survived an assassination attempt and was only recently allowed to leave hospital. Many German political figures were also targeted.

These elections are not supposed to have an impact on national politics, but the reality is very different, especially in Italy.

Meloni, who leads the far-right Brotherhood of Italy party, is set to be prime minister in 2022 and took the rare step of putting her name at the top of her party’s ballot, even though she has no intention of taking office. A seat in the European Parliament.

Giorgia Meloni has enjoyed steady poll numbers since she became prime minister in 2022, buoyed by a fragmented centrist and left-wing opposition and the gradual decline of her junior coalition partner, Matteo Salvini’s once-powerful populist League, whose voters are being lured by voters. . Withdrawal of foreign direct investment.

In an attempt to reverse this trend, Salvini pushed his party’s rhetoric to the right.

The League’s election posters – denouncing all manner of EU-backed initiatives, from electric cars to plastic bottle caps – attracted some ridicule, but also a great deal of attention.

Salvini’s main candidate, Roberto Fanacci, had the same effect. The army general was fired after he published a book in which he expressed homophobic and racist views. Since becoming the League’s candidate, he has redoubled his efforts with them.

Hardly a day goes by without the media amplifying Roberto Vanacci’s messages. That could translate into votes for the League, but if not, there could be trouble ahead for Salvini, whose leadership is beginning to be called into question.

The same scrutiny will be applied to the results of the left-wing Democratic Party, whose leader Ellie Schlein hopes to obtain 19% of the votes she won in the 2019 elections if she wants to remain in office.

To the left, all eyes will be on Ilaria Salles – the self-described anti-fascist activist, who has been detained in Hungary since 2023 on charges of participating in the beating of three far-right gunmen and belonging to a criminal association. She now runs on the Left/Greens platform.