The Mercosur countries have taken their time. In March, the EU Commission sent them its concrete demands to substantiate the sustainability commitments in the trade agreement by means of an additional declaration. Since then, Brussels has been waiting for an official response. At the EU-Latin America summit in mid-July, Brazil’s President Lula da Silva then announced a letter “within two to three weeks”.
So far, the Commission has received nothing, but that could soon change: The joint response from the four states should arrive this week, or next week at the latest, according to Brussels. Then the negotiations could finally be continued on a concrete basis. At the summit in July, Chancellor Olaf Scholz was still optimistic that the Mercosur states “absolutely want to bring this to a conclusion quickly and soon”.
The demands of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, however, are likely to be tough. Lula publicly rejected sanction-bound commitments to protect the Amazon region – Brazil has a “sovereign obligation to end deforestation“. He is also likely to call for support from financially strong Europeans to enable Brazilian producers to implement requirements under the EU’s deforestation regulation.
The Socialist also stressed that he wanted to be able to continue awarding public contracts directly to domestic SMEs. However, it is agreed in the trade agreement that these must also be put out to tender for EU companies. According to reports, the Socialist is primarily concerned with the healthcare sector.
For Europeans, this would in turn shift the balance of the agreement negotiated over 20 years. There is already considerable resistance in some countries, above all in France.
The European chemicals regulation REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals) should actually have been revised at the end of last year. But Commission President Ursula von der Leyen bowed to pressure from industry and the European People’s Party (EPP) and postponed the revision by a whole year. The Brussels-based authority now intends to submit its proposal in the course of the fourth quarter of 2023, but it is not yet known exactly when.
REACH regulates all chemical substances, both for industrial and consumer products. With the revision, the Commission wants to restrict or completely ban the use of substances that are particularly harmful to humans and nature. Industry feared high additional burdens and further price increases as a result of the new requirements. In view of the energy crisis in the wake of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, the Commission shelved the project, which was heavily criticized by environmentalists and some EU countries.
Among other things, these hope that REACH will tighten the restrictions on the authorization of so-called perishable chemicals (PFAS). Although discussions are also currently underway at the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) on a broad ban on PFAS, the process could drag on until 2025. In addition, ECHA can only restrict the use of individual substances. REACH reform would allow a so-called group approach for all chemicals in this group, which would be the much faster way to deal with chemicals in a more sustainable way, argue proponents of a revision.
However, time is very short for a reform during this legislative period. There are probably only a few months left for the legislative process. The European election campaign officially starts in spring 2024. During this time, legislative proposals are on ice in all institutions. This means that the Council and Parliament would have to define their negotiating mandates for the trilogue by Christmas.
An almost impossible undertaking, because the opposition is strong. Industry warns that safe and sustainable use of chemicals can already be achieved within the existing REACH framework. Far-reaching tightening through additional data requirements, assessment factors and substance restrictions could weaken the industry’s ability to compete and innovate, writes the German Chemical Industry Association (VCI). Politically, the EPP is on the side of industry here. The Christian Democrats have already demonstrated that they can delay laws with new requirements for companies in the case of the Renaturation Act.
The regulation of highly climate-impacting F-gases is about to be finalized. The trilogue agreement should actually have come before the summer break. But the Parliament and the Council were unable to agree on the exact regulations for the use of fluorinated greenhouse gases in electrical switchgear, heat pumps and the complete phase-out of F-gases. Over the summer, the sticking points should have been ironed out, so the next meeting (not yet scheduled) is expected to lead to a conclusion.
Both the member states and Parliament are currently still working out their positions on the framework for the certification of CO2 removals. The outcome of the negotiations could be decisive for the role CO2 storage will play in the European CO2 market in the future.
The Council is targeting the general approach on CO2 fleet limits for heavy-duty vehicles on Oct. 16. In Parliament, the ENVI is scheduled to vote on Yannick Jadot’s report on Oct. 23 or 24. Parliament is scheduled to vote in the second November plenary in Strasbourg. After that, the trilogues can start.
On the Euro 7 pollutant regulation, the Competitiveness Council intends to set the general direction on Sept. 25. The basis is the compromise proposal of the Spanish Council Presidency, on which working group meetings are planned for Sept. 1 and 12. In Parliament, the Environment Committee will vote on Alexandr Vondra’s (ECR) report on Oct. 12. On Nov. 9, the plenum is to decide. It is doubtful whether the trilogues can be concluded by the time of the European elections.
On Sept. 13, the European Parliament will vote on Javi López’s report on air pollution regulation. In the Council, work on new limits for air pollutants is still taking time. The general direction of member states is targeted for December. But it could be that the Spanish Council presidency brings the date forward. Otherwise, the trilogue could start in January at the earliest, and it would be difficult to conclude it by the election.
The climate policy autumn will last into the winter, because the UN Climate Change Conference in Dubai (COP28) does not begin until the end of November. For the EU, after what it sees as the failure of COP27, the main task is to find new sources of climate financing. In particular, the major CO2 emitters outside the group of industrialized nations are to be included in the group of donor countries. These include oil-producing countries, but also China. So far, these countries have refused to pay for damage and losses resulting from climate change or for climate adaptation measures worldwide.
The EU member states are expected to define their negotiating mandate for COP28 at the Environment Council on Oct. 16. It will be exciting to see how the countries position themselves on the use of CO2 capture to achieve the climate targets. In March, EU ministers decided to allow CCS technologies for the use of fossil fuels. Previously, the position had always been that CCS should only play a role for unavoidable emissions in industrial processes.
The word from government circles in Berlin is that a return to the old position before COP28 is considered likely. This is because CCS is seen in the energy industry as a loophole for the continued use of fossil fuels. However, too strict a wording would also limit the scope for negotiations in Dubai, where many influential countries (including the US) are likely to push for greater consideration of CCS. With Markus Grabitz
The EU sometimes has to accept accusations that it hides information well. In this case, it was a study on disinformation in connection with the Digital Services Act (DSA). Here, the Commission caused confusion because it published the study online last week, but withdrew it shortly afterwards, only to publish it again now.
The report was not yet ready when it accidentally went online, a spokesman for the commission explained. Now it is ready and therefore permanently online. Incidentally, without any change to the version from the week before.
In any case, the content of the study is explosive. On around 70 pages, the authors explain how the Kremlin is waging its war of aggression against Ukraine on social networks, digitally. Their conclusion on the defensive measures is sobering: “Overall, the efforts were unsuccessful.” Over the course of 2022, they say, the reach of Kremlin-backed social media accounts across Europe has grown significantly.
While the authors point out that during the study period in 2022, effective harm reduction under the DSA had not yet been required by law. However, 44 companies and organizations – including Google, Meta, and Tiktok – had signed a strengthened code of conduct against disinformation in June 2022.
On the one hand, the authors noted that the Kremlin’s ongoing disinformation campaigns are not only an integral part of Russia’s military agenda, but also pose risks to public security, fundamental rights, and electoral processes within the European Union.
On the other hand, in many cases, the remedial measures implemented by online platforms would not do justice to the Kremlin’s intentions and the scope of information warfare tactics used on online platforms. The platforms would have failed to implement their measures on a systemic level.
More to the point, none of the platforms had adopted policies “that apply to all or even most of the accounts operated by the Kremlin”. Moreover, the platforms basically ignored cross-platform, coordinated campaigns. As a result, Russia continues to operate “vast networks of accounts on social media that disseminate misleading, dehumanizing, and violent content and engage in coordinated, inauthentic behavior”.
The study was prepared by the consultancy Reset on behalf of the EU Commission. It was not surprising that platform operators had not been comprehensive and effective in defending against disinformation, study leader Felix Kartte told Table.Media. “What did surprise me, however, was the reach of Kremlin propaganda in the EU.”
To detect and capture disinformation, Reset used a tool from Google subsidiary Jigsaw, among others. Thanks to artificial intelligence, the tool is able to classify large volumes of data and identify toxic content. Google itself runs disinformation awareness campaigns with Jigsaw.
At present, however, it is not yet necessary to use AI to spread disinformation, says Kartte. While Deep Fakes are technically more complex and harder to detect, Cheap Fakes, cheap manipulations of images or audio, are still enough for platforms not to recognize them as fakes. “Actually, Kremlin propaganda doesn’t need the technological requirements for Deep Fakes yet”, Kartte said. “This is tomorrow’s threat, not today’s.”
For the upcoming European elections, the former EU Commission employee sees AI as a powerful tool for producing and scaling disinformation. And he expects mutual arming – on the side of the attackers as well as on the side of those who expose disinformation. “But I don’t think AI can solve the problem,” Kartte says. In any case, he says, the error rate of automated systems is still very high. “We need more human oversight,” he advises.
However, the platforms are not idle. Meta has just published its Adversarial Threat Report. In it, the company regularly provides insight into its work to detect and defend against security threats. Contrary to Reset’s observations, Meta’s report goes beyond its own platforms such as Facebook and Instagram and also looks at others such as Tiktok, YouTube and X (formerly Twitter). The current report focuses on China and Russia, but also Turkey and Iran.
Meta said it had removed thousands of accounts and pages on Chinese propaganda alone. They were “part of what is probably the largest known cross-platform covert influence operation in the world”. Read more about how Meta is investigating “spamouflage” on Facebook here.
The numbers are rising and rising. By the end of August this year, more people had already arrived in Italy via the Mediterranean than in the entire previous year (113,791 on Aug. 29, 2023, 105,140 on Dec. 31, 2022). This was despite the fact that the ultra-right-wing head of government, Giorgia Meloni of the Fratelli d’Italia, had promised before her election to curb uncontrolled migration across the Mediterranean. The first summer of Meloni’s government, however, was marked by headlines about overcrowded initial reception facilities and hundreds of mayors of overstretched municipalities taking to the barricades – across party lines.
In other countries of the European Union, the right-wing to extreme right-wing parties may already be rejoicing that they have found a theme in the rising numbers for their campaigns for the European elections in spring 2024. But for the Italian right, of all parties, this could become a problem.
In mid-July, Giorgia Meloni was still rejoicing. After all, she played a leading role in the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the EU and Tunisia, in which stronger cooperation on migration was agreed. Meloni saw this as the first success of her government’s work. But the ever-increasing numbers speak against it, even if the Italian government eagerly glosses over them. In May, the increase in the number of boats leaving Tunisia was still at 1008 percent, explained State Secretary Alfredo Mantovano a few days ago, “today it is at 386 percent.”
Tunisia’s President Kais Saied does not seem interested in this declaration of intent, which includes €105 million from the EU for more border protection and €150 million in financial aid. Not only has the number of those attempting the crossing to Europe from Tunisia increased compared to last year – but reports of migrants being trafficked from Tunisia into the deserts of Africa are not abating. In the meantime, Saied is said to have found a backer in Saudi Arabia, which imposes fewer conditions, such as respect for human rights, which the EU insists on.
EPP leader Manfred Weber, who considers curbing illegal migration a key issue in the European elections, has just spent two days in Tunisia. He spoke for two hours with Tunisia’s president and insisted on bringing the numbers down: “We’re talking about large sums of taxpayer money, the numbers have to come down now.”
With an eye on the upcoming European elections, Meloni’s problem does not end with the numbers. Lega leader Matteo Salvini is Meloni’s transport minister in the cabinet and thus responsible for ports and the coast guard, among other things. After the first few months of settling in and getting along with the new right-wing coalition of Fratelli d’Italia, Lega and Forza Italia, the battle for votes in the European elections is beginning between the lines.
Salvini visibly enjoys meddling in the affairs of his colleagues, first and foremost that of the nonpartisan Interior Minister Matteo Pientedosi. “We need a new security decree, and we need it as early as September,” he demanded on the last weekend of August, after some 4,000 migrants arrived on Lampedusa in two days. Italy, he said, should not be the arrival point for migrants from all over the world. The deputy prime minister, himself minister of the interior in 2018 and 2019, demands in a content-less and publicity-friendly manner: Europe must finally wake up.
His boss is wide awake. As if she already had an inkling of what she and her government troops would be facing in the coming weeks and months before the European elections, Meloni urged her colleagues on Monday at the first Council of Ministers after the summer break to remain united. “Together we can do a lot,” she said during the meeting, according to La Repubblica newspaper, adding directly that it was important, however, “that each minister in charge is aware of the work of his colleague to avoid duplication and scattering of resources.”
“Together we can do a lot” – a lofty wish of Meloni’s that will not be fulfilled, especially in the European election campaign. The parties governing in Rome as a right-wing coalition have different allies at the European level. Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia sit with PiS deputies from Poland in the Group of European Conservatives and Reformers (ECR). Meloni is being courted in Brussels by none other than Manfred Weber, (CSU) who would like to bring the Fratelli into the fold of the EPP – in order to keep them in first place ahead of the Social Democrats and thus be able to continue to claim the post of Commission President for his group.
Salvini’s Lega, on the other hand, sits with members of the German AfD and Le Pen’s Rassemblement National from France, among others. Where Meloni wants to consolidate her image as a moderate conservative by moving closer to Weber’s group, the Lega leader is once again playing the populist card. This will not only complicate the Fratelli d’Italia’s European election campaign, but could also shake up the governing coalition in Italy. That Salvini is capable of bringing down governments overnight as soon as he sees himself in a favorable starting position was sufficiently proven by his toppling of Giuseppe Conte’s government in 2019. Almut Siefert
The Mercosur countries have taken their time. In March, the EU Commission sent them its concrete demands to substantiate the sustainability commitments in the trade agreement by means of an additional declaration. Since then, Brussels has been waiting for an official response. At the EU-Latin America summit in mid-July, Brazil’s President Lula da Silva then announced a letter “within two to three weeks”.
So far, the Commission has received nothing, but that could soon change: The joint response from the four states should arrive this week, or next week at the latest, according to Brussels. Then the negotiations could finally be continued on a concrete basis. At the summit in July, Chancellor Olaf Scholz was still optimistic that the Mercosur states “absolutely want to bring this to a conclusion quickly and soon”.
The demands of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, however, are likely to be tough. Lula publicly rejected sanction-bound commitments to protect the Amazon region – Brazil has a “sovereign obligation to end deforestation“. He is also likely to call for support from financially strong Europeans to enable Brazilian producers to implement requirements under the EU’s deforestation regulation.
The Socialist also stressed that he wanted to be able to continue awarding public contracts directly to domestic SMEs. However, it is agreed in the trade agreement that these must also be put out to tender for EU companies. According to reports, the Socialist is primarily concerned with the healthcare sector.
For Europeans, this would in turn shift the balance of the agreement negotiated over 20 years. There is already considerable resistance in some countries, above all in France.
The European chemicals regulation REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals) should actually have been revised at the end of last year. But Commission President Ursula von der Leyen bowed to pressure from industry and the European People’s Party (EPP) and postponed the revision by a whole year. The Brussels-based authority now intends to submit its proposal in the course of the fourth quarter of 2023, but it is not yet known exactly when.
REACH regulates all chemical substances, both for industrial and consumer products. With the revision, the Commission wants to restrict or completely ban the use of substances that are particularly harmful to humans and nature. Industry feared high additional burdens and further price increases as a result of the new requirements. In view of the energy crisis in the wake of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, the Commission shelved the project, which was heavily criticized by environmentalists and some EU countries.
Among other things, these hope that REACH will tighten the restrictions on the authorization of so-called perishable chemicals (PFAS). Although discussions are also currently underway at the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) on a broad ban on PFAS, the process could drag on until 2025. In addition, ECHA can only restrict the use of individual substances. REACH reform would allow a so-called group approach for all chemicals in this group, which would be the much faster way to deal with chemicals in a more sustainable way, argue proponents of a revision.
However, time is very short for a reform during this legislative period. There are probably only a few months left for the legislative process. The European election campaign officially starts in spring 2024. During this time, legislative proposals are on ice in all institutions. This means that the Council and Parliament would have to define their negotiating mandates for the trilogue by Christmas.
An almost impossible undertaking, because the opposition is strong. Industry warns that safe and sustainable use of chemicals can already be achieved within the existing REACH framework. Far-reaching tightening through additional data requirements, assessment factors and substance restrictions could weaken the industry’s ability to compete and innovate, writes the German Chemical Industry Association (VCI). Politically, the EPP is on the side of industry here. The Christian Democrats have already demonstrated that they can delay laws with new requirements for companies in the case of the Renaturation Act.
The regulation of highly climate-impacting F-gases is about to be finalized. The trilogue agreement should actually have come before the summer break. But the Parliament and the Council were unable to agree on the exact regulations for the use of fluorinated greenhouse gases in electrical switchgear, heat pumps and the complete phase-out of F-gases. Over the summer, the sticking points should have been ironed out, so the next meeting (not yet scheduled) is expected to lead to a conclusion.
Both the member states and Parliament are currently still working out their positions on the framework for the certification of CO2 removals. The outcome of the negotiations could be decisive for the role CO2 storage will play in the European CO2 market in the future.
The Council is targeting the general approach on CO2 fleet limits for heavy-duty vehicles on Oct. 16. In Parliament, the ENVI is scheduled to vote on Yannick Jadot’s report on Oct. 23 or 24. Parliament is scheduled to vote in the second November plenary in Strasbourg. After that, the trilogues can start.
On the Euro 7 pollutant regulation, the Competitiveness Council intends to set the general direction on Sept. 25. The basis is the compromise proposal of the Spanish Council Presidency, on which working group meetings are planned for Sept. 1 and 12. In Parliament, the Environment Committee will vote on Alexandr Vondra’s (ECR) report on Oct. 12. On Nov. 9, the plenum is to decide. It is doubtful whether the trilogues can be concluded by the time of the European elections.
On Sept. 13, the European Parliament will vote on Javi López’s report on air pollution regulation. In the Council, work on new limits for air pollutants is still taking time. The general direction of member states is targeted for December. But it could be that the Spanish Council presidency brings the date forward. Otherwise, the trilogue could start in January at the earliest, and it would be difficult to conclude it by the election.
The climate policy autumn will last into the winter, because the UN Climate Change Conference in Dubai (COP28) does not begin until the end of November. For the EU, after what it sees as the failure of COP27, the main task is to find new sources of climate financing. In particular, the major CO2 emitters outside the group of industrialized nations are to be included in the group of donor countries. These include oil-producing countries, but also China. So far, these countries have refused to pay for damage and losses resulting from climate change or for climate adaptation measures worldwide.
The EU member states are expected to define their negotiating mandate for COP28 at the Environment Council on Oct. 16. It will be exciting to see how the countries position themselves on the use of CO2 capture to achieve the climate targets. In March, EU ministers decided to allow CCS technologies for the use of fossil fuels. Previously, the position had always been that CCS should only play a role for unavoidable emissions in industrial processes.
The word from government circles in Berlin is that a return to the old position before COP28 is considered likely. This is because CCS is seen in the energy industry as a loophole for the continued use of fossil fuels. However, too strict a wording would also limit the scope for negotiations in Dubai, where many influential countries (including the US) are likely to push for greater consideration of CCS. With Markus Grabitz
The EU sometimes has to accept accusations that it hides information well. In this case, it was a study on disinformation in connection with the Digital Services Act (DSA). Here, the Commission caused confusion because it published the study online last week, but withdrew it shortly afterwards, only to publish it again now.
The report was not yet ready when it accidentally went online, a spokesman for the commission explained. Now it is ready and therefore permanently online. Incidentally, without any change to the version from the week before.
In any case, the content of the study is explosive. On around 70 pages, the authors explain how the Kremlin is waging its war of aggression against Ukraine on social networks, digitally. Their conclusion on the defensive measures is sobering: “Overall, the efforts were unsuccessful.” Over the course of 2022, they say, the reach of Kremlin-backed social media accounts across Europe has grown significantly.
While the authors point out that during the study period in 2022, effective harm reduction under the DSA had not yet been required by law. However, 44 companies and organizations – including Google, Meta, and Tiktok – had signed a strengthened code of conduct against disinformation in June 2022.
On the one hand, the authors noted that the Kremlin’s ongoing disinformation campaigns are not only an integral part of Russia’s military agenda, but also pose risks to public security, fundamental rights, and electoral processes within the European Union.
On the other hand, in many cases, the remedial measures implemented by online platforms would not do justice to the Kremlin’s intentions and the scope of information warfare tactics used on online platforms. The platforms would have failed to implement their measures on a systemic level.
More to the point, none of the platforms had adopted policies “that apply to all or even most of the accounts operated by the Kremlin”. Moreover, the platforms basically ignored cross-platform, coordinated campaigns. As a result, Russia continues to operate “vast networks of accounts on social media that disseminate misleading, dehumanizing, and violent content and engage in coordinated, inauthentic behavior”.
The study was prepared by the consultancy Reset on behalf of the EU Commission. It was not surprising that platform operators had not been comprehensive and effective in defending against disinformation, study leader Felix Kartte told Table.Media. “What did surprise me, however, was the reach of Kremlin propaganda in the EU.”
To detect and capture disinformation, Reset used a tool from Google subsidiary Jigsaw, among others. Thanks to artificial intelligence, the tool is able to classify large volumes of data and identify toxic content. Google itself runs disinformation awareness campaigns with Jigsaw.
At present, however, it is not yet necessary to use AI to spread disinformation, says Kartte. While Deep Fakes are technically more complex and harder to detect, Cheap Fakes, cheap manipulations of images or audio, are still enough for platforms not to recognize them as fakes. “Actually, Kremlin propaganda doesn’t need the technological requirements for Deep Fakes yet”, Kartte said. “This is tomorrow’s threat, not today’s.”
For the upcoming European elections, the former EU Commission employee sees AI as a powerful tool for producing and scaling disinformation. And he expects mutual arming – on the side of the attackers as well as on the side of those who expose disinformation. “But I don’t think AI can solve the problem,” Kartte says. In any case, he says, the error rate of automated systems is still very high. “We need more human oversight,” he advises.
However, the platforms are not idle. Meta has just published its Adversarial Threat Report. In it, the company regularly provides insight into its work to detect and defend against security threats. Contrary to Reset’s observations, Meta’s report goes beyond its own platforms such as Facebook and Instagram and also looks at others such as Tiktok, YouTube and X (formerly Twitter). The current report focuses on China and Russia, but also Turkey and Iran.
Meta said it had removed thousands of accounts and pages on Chinese propaganda alone. They were “part of what is probably the largest known cross-platform covert influence operation in the world”. Read more about how Meta is investigating “spamouflage” on Facebook here.
The numbers are rising and rising. By the end of August this year, more people had already arrived in Italy via the Mediterranean than in the entire previous year (113,791 on Aug. 29, 2023, 105,140 on Dec. 31, 2022). This was despite the fact that the ultra-right-wing head of government, Giorgia Meloni of the Fratelli d’Italia, had promised before her election to curb uncontrolled migration across the Mediterranean. The first summer of Meloni’s government, however, was marked by headlines about overcrowded initial reception facilities and hundreds of mayors of overstretched municipalities taking to the barricades – across party lines.
In other countries of the European Union, the right-wing to extreme right-wing parties may already be rejoicing that they have found a theme in the rising numbers for their campaigns for the European elections in spring 2024. But for the Italian right, of all parties, this could become a problem.
In mid-July, Giorgia Meloni was still rejoicing. After all, she played a leading role in the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the EU and Tunisia, in which stronger cooperation on migration was agreed. Meloni saw this as the first success of her government’s work. But the ever-increasing numbers speak against it, even if the Italian government eagerly glosses over them. In May, the increase in the number of boats leaving Tunisia was still at 1008 percent, explained State Secretary Alfredo Mantovano a few days ago, “today it is at 386 percent.”
Tunisia’s President Kais Saied does not seem interested in this declaration of intent, which includes €105 million from the EU for more border protection and €150 million in financial aid. Not only has the number of those attempting the crossing to Europe from Tunisia increased compared to last year – but reports of migrants being trafficked from Tunisia into the deserts of Africa are not abating. In the meantime, Saied is said to have found a backer in Saudi Arabia, which imposes fewer conditions, such as respect for human rights, which the EU insists on.
EPP leader Manfred Weber, who considers curbing illegal migration a key issue in the European elections, has just spent two days in Tunisia. He spoke for two hours with Tunisia’s president and insisted on bringing the numbers down: “We’re talking about large sums of taxpayer money, the numbers have to come down now.”
With an eye on the upcoming European elections, Meloni’s problem does not end with the numbers. Lega leader Matteo Salvini is Meloni’s transport minister in the cabinet and thus responsible for ports and the coast guard, among other things. After the first few months of settling in and getting along with the new right-wing coalition of Fratelli d’Italia, Lega and Forza Italia, the battle for votes in the European elections is beginning between the lines.
Salvini visibly enjoys meddling in the affairs of his colleagues, first and foremost that of the nonpartisan Interior Minister Matteo Pientedosi. “We need a new security decree, and we need it as early as September,” he demanded on the last weekend of August, after some 4,000 migrants arrived on Lampedusa in two days. Italy, he said, should not be the arrival point for migrants from all over the world. The deputy prime minister, himself minister of the interior in 2018 and 2019, demands in a content-less and publicity-friendly manner: Europe must finally wake up.
His boss is wide awake. As if she already had an inkling of what she and her government troops would be facing in the coming weeks and months before the European elections, Meloni urged her colleagues on Monday at the first Council of Ministers after the summer break to remain united. “Together we can do a lot,” she said during the meeting, according to La Repubblica newspaper, adding directly that it was important, however, “that each minister in charge is aware of the work of his colleague to avoid duplication and scattering of resources.”
“Together we can do a lot” – a lofty wish of Meloni’s that will not be fulfilled, especially in the European election campaign. The parties governing in Rome as a right-wing coalition have different allies at the European level. Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia sit with PiS deputies from Poland in the Group of European Conservatives and Reformers (ECR). Meloni is being courted in Brussels by none other than Manfred Weber, (CSU) who would like to bring the Fratelli into the fold of the EPP – in order to keep them in first place ahead of the Social Democrats and thus be able to continue to claim the post of Commission President for his group.
Salvini’s Lega, on the other hand, sits with members of the German AfD and Le Pen’s Rassemblement National from France, among others. Where Meloni wants to consolidate her image as a moderate conservative by moving closer to Weber’s group, the Lega leader is once again playing the populist card. This will not only complicate the Fratelli d’Italia’s European election campaign, but could also shake up the governing coalition in Italy. That Salvini is capable of bringing down governments overnight as soon as he sees himself in a favorable starting position was sufficiently proven by his toppling of Giuseppe Conte’s government in 2019. Almut Siefert
