EU, Lega and Forza Italia at loggerheads. Tajani: 'We are influential'. Commissioner's match on the horizon

Even if, according to Giorgia Meloni, "all the positions expressed in Europe" by the allies "strengthen our government", what happened in Strasbourg is the backdrop to the ongoing war of nerves between the League and Forza Italia. In the press, the Italian leader Antonio Tajani returns to define as 'puerile' the idea that the political influence of a formation depends 'on who among the others votes for your candidate, because von der Leyen was the candidate of the EPP of which we are a fundamental component'. This is the repeated reply to the Carroccio's attacks on the EU vote. 'It would be like me saying that Salvini voted with Salis, Rackete, Fratoianni and Conte'. In very unconciliatory words. 'I stick to the facts: we are influential in EU governance, the Patriots are irrelevant'. Outside the borders, the new, crucial European negotiation is on the horizon, which is expected to get into full swing as early as next week. Italy's expectations revolve around weighty delegations including economy, industry, competitiveness or cohesion.

She vindicated FdI's no to Ursula-bis by speaking of a "choice of coherence" but assuring that the position of the party she presides over "has nothing to do with Italy's role, which is not given by the choices of the majority parties in Parliament, but by its weight within the European Union and by the credibility" of its executive. Having closed the affair of the reappointment of von der Leyen as president of the European Commission, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni emphasised that she had behaved "as a European leader should behave" because "I believe it is my duty to say when I think things are not working, rather than sweeping the dust under the carpet". 'Our task,' she recalled during an interview with Corriere della Sera, 'is to help chart a course, not to watch in silence what happens'.

The negative vote of the via della Scrofa MEPs, however - Meloni is convinced - will not affect the negotiations on the Rome-Brussels axis for the delegations she claims for the Italian commissioner. The names of a man and a woman will have to be mentioned: the first will most likely be Minister Raffaele Fitto, on whom Palazzo Chigi is betting decisively, while the second (purely formal) could be a representative of civil society.