Giorgia Meloni popularity in Europe and around the world just keep raising

Описание: Giorgia Meloni, born 15 January 1977, is an Italian politician who has been serving as the prime minister of Italy since October 2022, the first woman to hold this position. The shapeshifter: who is the real Giorgia Meloni? (The Guardian) She’s been called a neo-fascist and a danger to Italy. But she has won over many heads of Europe, including the UK prime minister. Should we be worried? By Alexander Stille Thu 19 Sep 2024 05.00 BST In mid-June, Giorgia Meloni was in an exultant mood while hosting the G7 summit, a gathering of the world’s most powerful nations, in the southern Italian region of Apulia. After days in which she presided over meetings speaking English, French and Spanish along with her native Italian, one evening she danced the pizzica – a traditional Apulian dance – twirling and hopping to the trance-like rhythmic folk music often played at local weddings at a contagious 100 beats per minute. Meloni’s uninhibited performance expressed the self-confidence of an emerging political star, who, after a strong showing in the European elections just a few days earlier, was the hottest political leader in Europe. She took a selfie with Indian strongman Narendra Modi, which she posted on Instagram to her 3.5 million followers with the caption “Hello from the MELODI team.” For a politician who only a few years ago was stuck at the margins of Italian politics as the head of a small rightwing party, Brothers of Italy, Meloni, at 47, appeared to be on top of the world. Meloni has worked hard to achieve the respectability that has eluded other rightwing parties such as Marine Le Pen’s National Rally. She was received at the White House by Joe Biden and has been accepted by centrist parties within the EU. This is all the more surprising given the openly neo-fascist origins of her career. (Just before she was elected prime minister in late 2022, author Roberto Saviano wrote in the Guardian: “Giorgia Meloni is a danger to Italy and the rest of Europe.”) But in two years, she has surprised many people by her political pragmatism and shrewd ability. The head of a party traditionally hostile to the European Union, Meloni instead has worked closely with the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, and made necessary concessions to obtain EU funding for her domestic agenda. She has emerged as one of Ukraine’s most reliable supporters – surprising given the strain of pro-Putin sentiment traditional on the European right – and convinced her ideological compatriot, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, to finally approve EU military aid to Ukraine. She managed to move the EU towards her own position on immigration, greatly expanding a programme to pay north African countries to stop the flow of migrants across the Mediterranean. With her hard-earned credibility, Meloni has worked her way out of the neo-fascist pigeonhole in which her critics tried to confine her. After that joyful dance in June, the unstoppable rise of Meloni and the European right seemed to stall. In France, where the National Rally appeared ready to assume power, the left won a surprising victory. The rightwing Vox in Spain quit the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) – the centre-right coalition that Meloni heads – to join a new grouping of rightwing parties called Patriots for Europe. Von der Leyen returned to the presidency of the European Commission without Meloni’s help.