If Georgia Meloni, the leader of Fratelli d’Italia, wins, it will be a thunderclap in Europe, a boost for far-right movements on the continent, and Marine Le Pen will not fail to recover his victory.
She also began last weekend, during her back-to-school speech in Agde, by praising “the patriotic wave” which is sweeping across Europe, from Sweden to Italy. A prelude, according to her, to her triumph in the presidential election of 2027 since, since the conquest of 89 seats of deputies, Marine Le Pen tries to make up, once again, the RN in party of government able to manage the country in five year.
However, the strategy followed by his transalpine counterpart has nothing to do. It is even a counter-model. Fratelli d’Italia is a movement that claims to be conservative. He has forged alliances on the right, with Matteo Salvini’s League and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party, and he wants to be resolutely Atlanticist. In France, conversely, the RN is pro-Putin, it claims a populist line, neither right nor left, and the candidates for the presidency of LR reject any agreement with the Lepenist formation. In the European Parliament, the RN also sits in an identity group with the League of Matteo Salvini, while Fratelli d’Italia forms a group with the Polish conservatives of the PIS and the Spaniards of Vox.
The success of the Italian party, which is less than ten years old, underlines by contrast all the shortcomings of its French cousin, which will celebrate its half-century in two weeks.
The two parties find themselves above all on the migration issue, an essential motivation of their voters. And the two movements also both have a heavy past: Fratelli d’Italia is the heir of the MSI, the fascist party of Giorgio Almirante, an old friend of… Jean-Marie Le Pen. Cumbersome references that they find difficult to bury. Giorgia Meloni recovered the tricolor flame, invented by the fascist MSI. An emblem copied by the National Front and which remains that of the RN. Hunt the natural, it comes back with the logo!