The exclusion of a preliminary agreement for the distribution of the bloc’s senior positions after the June elections has infuriated the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, who is now considering formally abstaining from the decision, according to media reports.
He agreement on senior EU officials reached after last week’s informal summit without the participation of Italy has unleashed the ire of the prime minister, Georgia Meloni, who was considered to have earned the role of “kingmaker” in the process after the good results of your matchBrothers of Italy, in the European elections.
The announcement of a preliminary agreementnegotiated yesterday by representatives of the European People’s Party (EPP), the socialists and the liberals, represented a blow for the Italian Governmentwho did not receive the news well.
Meloni has openly contested the selection method “in which a few try to decide for everyone” speaking today before the country’s Parliament before a leaders summit of the EU convened in Brussels to decide on the issue.
“No true democrat who believes in popular sovereignty can in his heart consider it acceptable that in Europe there has been an attempt negotiate over senior positions even before the people went to the polls,” he said of the process.
According to the italian prime ministerthe latest agreement nullifies the logic of consensus on which most decisions at EU level have always been based, by not including “those of the opposite political side and those of nations deemed too small to be worthy of sitting at the tables that count.”
A possible political fragmentation
He considered it “surreal” that during the informal meeting from last week propose names for senior positions as a result of bilateral talks between parties, “without even the pretense of a open debatebased on how citizens had spoken at the polls.”
“It seems to me that, until now, they have not wanted to take into account the message transmitted by citizens at the polls,” he added when commenting on the substance of the agreement. For Meloni, EU citizens asked a change of direction by rejecting the policies pursued by the ruling forces “in many of the great European nations, who are also very often the forces that have dictated the Union policies in recent years” he said, in a thinly veiled reference to Germany and France, which mediated the deal on major EU jobs.
Isolated in the European Council, Meloni is now considering a drastic responsewhich includes the abstention in the decision final decision on senior EU officials to be taken at the next European Council that begins tomorrow, as reported by the Italian media.
According to the EU Treaties, such a decision can be taken by qualified majoritybut by convention leaders seek consensus when appointing senior officials.
Meloni’s abstention could cause political fragmentation due to exclusion of Italy from the talks. “Decisions could have been postponed until the summit tomorrow to show more respect for a founding member state of the EU,” Italian government sources told the newspaper Corriere della Sera.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who participated in the talks, was in charge of inform Meloni of the result, but, according to La Stampa, he never picked up the phone. Another medium reports that the head of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen will negotiate personally with Meloni to garner support from 24 MEPs of the Brothers of Italy to their re-election in a plenary session in Strasbourg scheduled for the middle of next month.
Italy is expected to get a Commission vice-presidency and a relevant portfolio in exchange for its support of the senior management package. But Meloni warned that “he will simply ask [esto] in exchange for a role that rightfully belongs to Italy”.
