Meloni, the award received from Musk and the rapprochement with Trump

Giorgia Meloni will receive the Atlantic Council's Global Citizen Awards in New York on Monday 23 October. It is one of two awards presented annually by the prestigious US think tank founded in 1961 to "leaders from around the world who have made outstanding and distinctive contributions to strengthening transatlantic relations". Presenting it to him will beElon Musk, the US billionaire owner of X and Tesla among the main sponsors of Donald Trump.

The acquaintance between Musk and the right-wing leader has been going on for some time. In June last year she received him at Palazzo Chigi and six months later Mister X was among the guests of honour at Atreju, the Fdi youth event. So it should come as no surprise that it was the Italian premier who pushed for Musk's presence at his award ceremony. A choice that, a little over a month before the US elections, can only be seen as an attempt at rapprochement with Trump. A move that certainly does not go unnoticed in the now Democratic-led White House.

In these two years of government Meloni has distinguished herself for the good relationship built with the administration led by Joe Biden. But now she feels the need to banish the image of the kiss with which the US president greeted her in March at the end of the face-to-face meeting in the Oval Office. Not least to avoid being crossed by Matteo Salvini. His deputy prime minister and League leader, who has never stopped rooting for the US tycoon, would emerge more than strengthened in the event of a Trump victory.

This is also true for Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister allied with the Lega Nord (in the Europarliament they are in the same group) but who has always professed to be a friend of Meloni as well. The same Orban who, as soon as he assumed the presidency of the EU on 1 July last, without any mandate from the 27, first flew to Kiev to Volodymyr Zelensky, then three days later went to Moscow to Vladimir Putin, and 48 hours later flew to Beijing to Xi Jinping, concluding his diplomatic mission in Florida to Trump, leaving the NATO summit in Washington prematurely. The objective is clear: to become the interlocutor in Europe of the possible future US president, starting the reconstruction of a relationship with Putin to the obvious disadvantage of Ukraine, on whose support he continues to weigh his vetoes. In short, it is a competition all within the right in which, however, Meloni is the most in trouble.

Her role as prime minister calls for prudence or rather balance since she cannot risk compromising her relationship with the future tenant of the White House should Kamala Harris win. And then, in these very weeks, the new government structures are being decided in Brussels and Ursula von der Leyen (and the EPP) has given ample credit to the Italian government candidate Raffaele Fitto to one of the executive vice-presidencies despite the 'no' vote of the socialists and liberals who reproach the Meloni-led executive for flirting with the sovereignist far-right (of Salvini, Orban and Le Pen) that voted just in recent days against the resolution to maintain support for Ukraine.