It’s like a magnet. A North Star that she has incorporated into her soul as a fully political woman, who has belonged entirely to her political party since she was a teenager. In the midst of storms, when the tide of international and national elites would like her to take the last and definitive step towards the safe harbor of fully institutional conservatism, Giorgia Meloni steps aside and sits on the opposite side. She did it by leading her parliamentary majority in Italy to vote no to the reform of the ESM, last December. She did it, above all, last week by placing her large European parliamentary group in opposition to the second Commission chaired by Ursula von der Layen, outside a perimeter of majority that has closed ranks and brought together very different souls. The Prime Minister has said she is against it on the merits and the method, she has said that the fact that there are also the Greens in the majority was decisive. Surely the fact that, despite what she believed and announced, the von der Layen Commission did not need her votes to exist has counted. But it is to be believed that, somewhere, this decision was already taken, originally: a little because it resembles the anthropology of the origins, and a little because the political gamble of the president is strongly focused on the wear and tear of this Europe, both at the level of public opinion and with regard to international relations.

Trump and What’s Next: China, Russia, Trade

The weeks we are leaving behind and those that are beginning, moreover, are all illuminated by the political event par excellence and its long-term and broad-spectrum repercussions. We are talking about the inevitable and belated renunciation of the candidacy by the outgoing president Joe Biden. Barring any reversals of course in history that no one would bet on today, it seems like we are faced with the prequel to a film that seemed obvious anyway, and which has as its subject the second US presidency of Donald Trump. An event destined to significantly change the global course on many issues. From the containment of the harmful effects of the environmental crisis to the war in Russia and Ukraine, from the function and activity of NATO to the Middle Eastern question, up to the wars – hopefully only commercial – that Europe and the US are fighting with China: all issues that Trump’s comb will treat in a decidedly different way, more explicitly marked by isolationism and exclusively American interest. A scenario in which even the role of Europe reasonably risks being modified, and which could push the European institutions to face a crossroads: either to really make a qualitative leap on the road to integration also in terms of foreign policy, or to explode their internal contradictions, proving the selfless prophecies of the Euro-skeptics right. It is probably this second bet that has convinced Giorgia Meloni the most. Who certainly feared the internal bombardment of Matteo Salvini, but who above all believes in a new world that resembles the old one, in which she can assert her distance from the control rooms of Brussels at the tables of Washington. Hoping to be less alone tomorrow and to be able to count – perhaps – on the company of Le Pen, who aims to lead the most important European country during this European legislature.

Will Meloni be able to raise her voice on immigration?

Always looking ahead, and peering into the crystal ball of popular consensus, Meloni probably imagined that sitting at the table of those who are the majority in Europe without being able to really influence the policies that from up there fall down here, was a risk rather than an opportunity. She would have found herself unable to blame anyone, when new environmental constraints were approved, affecting the mobility and industry of European and Italian citizens. Not being able to move in a coherently critical manner all the upcoming refinancing of support for Kiev against Putin, who in the Italian population and its electorate in particular is perceived as an expensive therapeutic obstinacy. Not being able to declare herself the head of the victims when the new stability mechanisms will force – and it will be very soon – to further tighten the purse strings. Not being able to really raise her voice when, on immigration, people continue to speak in one way and act in another. Rejected with losses and sent back into the corner of the Eurosceptic extremists, Meloni was able to make a virtue of necessity, playing a role that suits her best, that is, representing the opposition.

For the majority of Italian liberal and progressive analysts, she made a mistake and finally gave in to political immaturity. She also contradicted the advice that she herself seemed to endorse that came from intellectuals and journalists in her political area, who recommended putting herself in the majority as Silvio Berlusconi had always done in Europe. She, struck by the conventio ad excludendum, made a virtue of necessity and placed herself on the opposite end. The results of her gamble will take a few years to be fully seen. We will have to see Trump’s second star really rise, weigh its impacts, understand the effects of this new scheme on public opinion, and see whether Giorgia’s Italy will prove her right or wrong. And finally – or rather: first of all – measure how much the interests of the party and the national interest coincide. The three years of the legislature that we should have ahead of us will also be the playing field for these gambles and for the answers to these questions. Those who don’t leave almost always double.