On October 18, a court in Rome ruled against Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, on her plans to have some migrants to the country processed in Albanian detainment camps. While the ruling might look like a setback for Meloni and her nationalist-right agenda, the policy itself was fairly moderate compared with some of her political rhetoric in the past.
In 2017, Meloni argued that an “invasion of fake refugees” would undermine Italy’s “Greek, Roman, and Christian origins”—and even potentially spark a religious war. Prior to this, Meloni had endorsed the Great Replacement theory—the idea that anti-conservative elites are driving a plot to direct migrants into Western countries for the purposes of ethnic substitution. She also warned that Italy is at risk of becoming the “refugee camp of Europe”—and has even called for a naval blockade to prevent migrants from crossing the Mediterranean.
Since she came to office, however, the policies haven’t quite live up to the rhetoric. Meloni’s detention plan would have only applied to a small number of migrants—and she almost certainly knew it would be rejected by the courts anyway, as similar schemes have been elsewhere in Europe.
Although in 2018, Meloni posted congratulations to Vladimir Putin on social media for his sham election victory, in March of this year, she told reporters at the European Summit in Brussels that she did not join Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in congratulating Putin on his re-election—and she’s continued, meanwhile, to reaffirm Italy’s support for Ukraine.
Meloni has also made some notable choices in the European Parliament. Where her leadership of the nationalist party Brothers of Italy and history of far-right rhetoric might have suggested that she’d align with Orbán and the Patriots for Europe voting bloc, she’s chosen instead to lead a more moderate voting bloc—the European Conservatives and Reformists. What do all these apparent contractions mean?
Leila Simona Talani is a professor in international political economy at King’s College London, the director of its Centre for Italian Politics, and the author of The International Political Economy of Migration in the Globalization Era. Talani says Meloni’s politics are shaped mostly by the risks she sees to her position of power: Her coalition didn’t win a majority in the last election; her country’s debts force it to rely on external creditors; and she can’t afford to have the European Union or the United States as adversaries. These pressures, Talani says, are driving Meloni’s policies—along with her proposals to change the country’s electoral system. These changes would allow for the direct election of the prime minister, give his or her party a clear majority in Parliament, and give whoever holds the office much more power …
Oliver Mills: How would you see Meloni’s priorities as prime minister?
