Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had already faced criticism last week for her stance in the conflict between Israel and the terrorist organization Hamas. There is also unrest within the Commission. The media report that more than 800 officials and employees of the Commission have signed a declaration by name. The letter, obtained by Table.Media, literally accuses the Commission, led by von der Leyen, of giving “a free hand to accelerate and legitimize a war crime in the Gaza Strip.”
The broadsides in the letter are of quite a large caliber. The signatories complain: “We hardly recognize the EU’s values in the apparent indifference that our institution has shown in recent days to the ongoing massacre of civilians in the Gaza Strip.”
It’s not that often that Commission officials publicly come down on the agency and its leaders like this. Officials last recall a public statement in 2010 when Jacques Santer’s Commission was forced to resign over massive allegations of corruption against Research Commissioner Edith Cresson.
Reinhard Bütikofer, a member of the European Parliament since 2009 and a proven expert on foreign policy, says in an interview with Table.Media: “That a few hundred Commission officials out of a total of more than 30,000 criticize their own president in a statement because of her Israel policy is unusual but certainly permissible. Freedom of expression also applies to civil servants.” Von der Leyen would have to put up with that.
But in doing so, these EU officials also set a new standard, the Green MEP continued: “In the future, one will certainly listen closely to what open letters there are when a Council President Michel cannot find clear words on China’s oppressive policies or when a Commissioner Várhelyi courts the Serbian autocrat Vučić.” And then Bütikofer takes a stand on the matter: “Incidentally, I think that the solidarity with Israel shown by Ms. von der Leyen is good.”
Have a good start to the week
Ms. Hohlmeier, with the Covid Reconstruction Fund (RRF), the EU disburses €338 billion in grants and €385 billion in loans to member states. The Court of Auditors gave a poor grade. Has the project failed?
The Covid Recovery Fund was intended to be a crisis instrument. It was intended to help member states that were particularly affected by the pandemic and its consequences to get out of the crisis with the money. That was the idea. At the end of 2022, not even 15 percent of the projects that were supposed to lead to economic recovery were implemented. Let’s take the example of Spain. Spain was hit hard by Covid. Spain has now received €70 billion in grants. But most of the money has not reached the real economy, even though the money is in Spain’s accounts. Many projects will not be implemented until 2024 to 2026. Taking Spain as an example, we see that the RRF crisis instrument has become a cohesion instrument. The crisis instrument is no longer a crisis instrument.
But the instrument is also intended for reconstruction …
When it comes to reconstruction, I imagine that hospitals not adequately equipped for a pandemic, for example, will receive appropriate support so that not so many people die because of a lack of medical care. Tourism, which is a key sector of the Spanish economy, does not need reconstruction; it has long been up and running again. I have fundamental doubts: The instrument was designed for six years. A plan is created with economic and reform steps. That reminds me of a socialist planned economy. It no longer has anything to do with the commitment to the power of the European single market and the social market economy. Six-year plans are difficult because the planning horizon is so long that the plan has to be permanently corrected. We are experiencing this right now. Covid is history; we have long since been dealing with the consequences of the war in Ukraine, the crisis in the Middle East and the refugee crisis. The consequences of these crises are affecting other member states. In addition, there are planning, administrative and tendering problems.
Budget controllers are now increasingly checking on disbursements to member states, what do you see?
The funds are hardly traceable. The Commission denies the European Court of Auditors unrestricted and permanent access to the relevant databases. Even we, as budget controllers from the Parliament, have problems obtaining adequate data. The Commission indicates a ministry or an authority as the final recipient of European funds. That is interesting, but not what we want to know. Surely the auditors must be able to examine tenders and project expenditures in detail. The Commission allows this only to a very limited extent because it considers this the responsibility of the member states. However, anyone who has read the Court of Auditors’ reports carefully in recent years will have noticed that Member States with low administrative capacity or with problems with the rule of law stand out with massive irregularities, especially in the area of tenders and project awards. If we don’t even know where the money is spent, we can’t audit. There is a lack of transparency.
But the Commission can only disburse if the member states have demonstrably completed their milestones.
True enough. We know that across the EU last year, 15 of the 281 milestones and targets were either not satisfactorily met or did not meet the eligibility criteria, which is more than five percent. The review of milestones and targets is subject to a negotiation process. In the process, there is wide latitude as to what is or is not considered “satisfactory.” The Commission then takes the position that it has already fulfilled its monitoring function. However, it is necessary to verify whether the planned projects are implemented and running. There is no status of concrete implementation.
Then you need to contact the member states…
The member states also refuse to provide insight into the concrete realization of the projects. Incidentally, they also deny it to the national parliaments.
What else stands out?
Double funding, the financing of nationally recurring expenditures, and tendering problems. For example, the Spanish government has simply booked recurring payments it has made from its national budget since 2017 through the RRF. It labeled it differently, declaring it as a new project to support a specific measure. According to the legal requirements, this is explicitly forbidden. In Slovakia, double funding was identified for the first time, where a project was funded by the European Social Fund and the RRF. In both cases applies: this has nothing to do with the Covid Reconstruction Fund.
Has the Spanish government ensured that the conditions are met?
The Spanish government has undertaken to carry out a fundamental pension reform, as the instability of the Spanish pension system is seen as a possible future trouble spot. This reform is a prerequisite for meeting a milestone and thus for the money to be approved. However, the Spanish pension reform proposal is more window dressing than sustainable. I am curious to see how the Commission will deal with it.
And in other member states?
We note that there are major implementation problems in Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria. In France, for example, a project originally planned for carbon savings in steel production was exchanged. The Commission ultimately waves the exchange of projects through because otherwise the money can not be disbursed.
What is your final conclusion?
I do not consider this type of funding to be sustainable. The Commission is required by the Treaty to monitor the use of the money. After all, this is taxpayer money. It has to know what the money is actually being used for. I have some sympathy for pre-funding, but disbursing funds years before projects begin does not make sense. Moreover, I question 100 percent funding, as it often leads to a lack of European added value or only generates mere windfall profits. We need a lot of money for competitiveness, new technologies and innovations, and we also have crises to deal with. The EU has too little money for it to be stashed away for years and then be only partly spent in a target-oriented way. We need to learn serious lessons from these mistakes.
The Battery Regulation is a highly ambitious project of the European Union. It is about structuring a product’s entire life cycle and value chain more sustainably. The aim is to create a circular economy that makes Europe less dependent on third countries. Due to the transport and energy transition, batteries are considered one of the key industries of the future. So far, Europe has been highly dependent on China, which, according to the European Court of Auditors, accounted for a full 76 percent of global production capacity in 2021.
And it is a lucrative business field. The consulting firm McKinsey calculates that the demand for lithium-ion batteries will increase by 27 percent annually through 2030 – from 700 gigawatt to 4.7 terawatt hours. This will create a market with a turnover of 400 billion dollars along the value chain. The Battery Regulation is intended to secure Europe’s market share in the long term.
To achieve this, the Battery Regulation focuses, among other things, on the following core instruments:
“Overall, the idea of the Battery Regulation is to build sustainable business models in the context of the EU Green Deal and to incentivize them to not fall behind in global competition,” Achim Teuber sums up the Battery Regulation. Teuber is an analyst at the sustainability consultancy SystemIQ.
Christoph Lienemann, Managing Director at PEM Motion – a consulting firm and engineering service provider in the field of e-mobility – argues that the Battery Regulation also pursues geopolitical goals despite all the sustainability considerations. “Since we still have a comparatively small battery industry in Germany and Europe, it is also a matter of keeping as many raw materials as possible here on site and finding energy- and resource-efficient solutions for production and recycling. This minimizes dependencies – and we are not only competing with Asia here.”
This creates an enormous pressure situation for China as the world market leader. Europe is the largest export market for manufacturers from the People’s Republic. Its market share in car batteries alone is 34 percent. However, the new regulations have not been received as negatively as the media often made them out to be. “In discussions with Chinese suppliers, it is clear that they are already beginning to prepare for the requirements and are willing to comply with them. For instance, the largest manufacturer in China has publicly announced that production will be CO2-neutral by 2025 and the entire supply chain by 2035,” says Teuber.
And Gerrit Bockey, expert for Battery Production Technologies at PEM Motion and head of Battery-News, adds: “Basically, there were discussions about whether this was green protectionism. But there was much more discussion about it being an incentive to become more established in the market.” One example is the carbon footprint. Batteries from China come to Europe packing 105 grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hour – partly because of the energy mix during production. Local producers (including Chinese ones, of course) are 20 to 30 percent below that. “There are companies along the entire value chain that are setting up in Europe to have some advantage when entering the market within the framework of the Battery Regulation. It incentivizes them to leave their home market and invest in Europe,” Bockey adds.
It is also clear that compliance with the Battery Regulation will be difficult without Chinese investment. According to Teuber, it would take an additional investment of 62 billion euros by 2030 to comply with the Battery Regulation targets – 44 billion for cell production, 12 billion for cathode material production and 6 billion for anode material production. “What matters is who makes the investments and who has the capabilities to implement them. Currently, 90 percent of anodes and cathodes come from China and 60 percent of EVs. For these companies, it is, of course, interesting to make their investments here and comply with the requirements,” Teuber concludes.
This is one reason why investments from China in the battery sector have increased. The Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS) calculated that these investments represented 57 percent (4.5 billion euros) of total Chinese investments in Europe in 2022. This mainly involves start-ups rather than takeovers. “A handful of large projects – almost exclusively in the automotive industry – are behind the rise in greenfield investments. Chinese battery giants such as CATL, Envision AESC and SVOLT invested in plants in Germany, the UK, France and Hungary,” MERICS summarizes.
Let’s face the facts and stop talking about Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni as we would like her to be but as she really is. About a year ago, she and her government took the lead in Italy with the slogan “We are ready,” claiming to be a new force ready to transform the country. Unfortunately, that rhetoric quickly drifted away from reality.
Giorgia Meloni now finds herself in a precarious position, desperately seeking new alibis to mask her growing incompetence and lack of consistency. With her main ally, Matteo Salvini, who leads the far-right Lega party, she seems to have adopted a strategy of denouncing, stigmatizing and making excuses at any cost. The recent mass influx of migrants to Lampedusa shows that she is trapped in her propaganda and contradictions.
During the Italian elections, she promised a naval blockade to stop smugglers, reaffirming the nation’s independence from Europe. Since she has been in power, however, the number of irregular migrant arrivals in Italy has increased significantly, from 105,129 in 2022 to 133,617 in the first nine months of 2023, according to the Italian Interior Ministry.
She is now calling for European solidarity, but her allies in Poland and Hungary have so far blocked any European solution. She is not taking the time to look for common strategies. In Budapest, however, alongside Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán – who has long opposed a European strategy in the migration crisis – she had enough time to declare herself the defender of God and the (traditional, of course!) family. We hope that this is not happening without his blessing.
Moreover, Poland has so far been reluctant to show solidarity with Italy, and the governments of Hungary and the Czech Republic have only recently rejected negotiations on the regulation to “manage the migration crisis.”
These political contradictions are obvious. Giorgia Meloni has so far been the ally of her actual opponents and the opponent of her potential allies. The contradictions she faces are the same as those of the French and European far-right. Marine Le Pen and Matteo Salvini criticized European intervention in migration, while Marion Maréchal called for European Union action and Giorgia Meloni supported European solidarity.
This shows a clear split among nationalists, and even within the same government, as in Italy, where Giorgia Meloni and Matteo Salvini hold opposing positions.
In June, Italy supported the new European Pact on Asylum and Migration, which aims to better distribute refugees within the European Union. Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour, aligned with the nationalist governments of Hungary and Poland, on the other hand, criticized the measure, illustrating the nationalists’ inability to find common solutions.
The stricken Giorgia Meloni tries to hide her inadequacies and inconsistencies by identifying scapegoats. In this way, she wants to distract from the fact that she cannot keep her election promises.
The intention is to show strength, identity, stamina, and the ability to escape the dictates and “conspiracies” of Europe, migrants, banks, NGOs, LGBTQI+, and multinational corporations. However, this clearly shows a weakness rather than a strength. We are in a phase of obfuscation, mass distraction, and propaganda that could last until the European elections in June 2024.
Meloni’s control over public media in Italy is not conducive to diversity of debate. Migration can only be managed through European cooperation, not competition or confrontation. It is crucial to use all available levers such as visas, development aid and trade agreements to achieve greater cooperation among countries of origin.
This requires concerted action by European countries, especially France, Italy, Germany and Spain, as well as by European institutions. Giorgia Meloni seems to have understood recently that the understanding between Italy and France is crucial for an effective European solution to the migration issue, as her meeting in late September with President Emmanuel Macron in Rome has shown.
The just-reached agreement on managing the migration crisis situation is a first result. It is encouraging that the dialogue was constructive and a majority was found, without Poland and Hungary, who once again voted against it. This is a very useful small step towards a comprehensive agreement.
The meeting of Euro-Mediterranean Heads of State and Government in Malta at the end of September was an opportunity to reaffirm the need to move forward quickly and together on this issue. We will see whether a sense of responsibility will prevail over electoral tactics in the coming weeks – in Rome as elsewhere.
Because it is imperative that the new European Pact on Asylum and Migration, strongly desired by France and the European Commission, be finally adopted in consultation with the European Parliament and implemented as soon as possible.
If Europeans give in to “every man for himself,” the problems will be greater for all. We as Europeans can regain control by respecting our common values and protecting our common interests.
Sandro Gozi is a Member of the European Parliament and belongs to the Renew Group. He was Secretary of State for European Affairs in Italy from 2014 to 2018.
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had already faced criticism last week for her stance in the conflict between Israel and the terrorist organization Hamas. There is also unrest within the Commission. The media report that more than 800 officials and employees of the Commission have signed a declaration by name. The letter, obtained by Table.Media, literally accuses the Commission, led by von der Leyen, of giving “a free hand to accelerate and legitimize a war crime in the Gaza Strip.”
The broadsides in the letter are of quite a large caliber. The signatories complain: “We hardly recognize the EU’s values in the apparent indifference that our institution has shown in recent days to the ongoing massacre of civilians in the Gaza Strip.”
It’s not that often that Commission officials publicly come down on the agency and its leaders like this. Officials last recall a public statement in 2010 when Jacques Santer’s Commission was forced to resign over massive allegations of corruption against Research Commissioner Edith Cresson.
Reinhard Bütikofer, a member of the European Parliament since 2009 and a proven expert on foreign policy, says in an interview with Table.Media: “That a few hundred Commission officials out of a total of more than 30,000 criticize their own president in a statement because of her Israel policy is unusual but certainly permissible. Freedom of expression also applies to civil servants.” Von der Leyen would have to put up with that.
But in doing so, these EU officials also set a new standard, the Green MEP continued: “In the future, one will certainly listen closely to what open letters there are when a Council President Michel cannot find clear words on China’s oppressive policies or when a Commissioner Várhelyi courts the Serbian autocrat Vučić.” And then Bütikofer takes a stand on the matter: “Incidentally, I think that the solidarity with Israel shown by Ms. von der Leyen is good.”
Have a good start to the week
Ms. Hohlmeier, with the Covid Reconstruction Fund (RRF), the EU disburses €338 billion in grants and €385 billion in loans to member states. The Court of Auditors gave a poor grade. Has the project failed?
The Covid Recovery Fund was intended to be a crisis instrument. It was intended to help member states that were particularly affected by the pandemic and its consequences to get out of the crisis with the money. That was the idea. At the end of 2022, not even 15 percent of the projects that were supposed to lead to economic recovery were implemented. Let’s take the example of Spain. Spain was hit hard by Covid. Spain has now received €70 billion in grants. But most of the money has not reached the real economy, even though the money is in Spain’s accounts. Many projects will not be implemented until 2024 to 2026. Taking Spain as an example, we see that the RRF crisis instrument has become a cohesion instrument. The crisis instrument is no longer a crisis instrument.
But the instrument is also intended for reconstruction …
When it comes to reconstruction, I imagine that hospitals not adequately equipped for a pandemic, for example, will receive appropriate support so that not so many people die because of a lack of medical care. Tourism, which is a key sector of the Spanish economy, does not need reconstruction; it has long been up and running again. I have fundamental doubts: The instrument was designed for six years. A plan is created with economic and reform steps. That reminds me of a socialist planned economy. It no longer has anything to do with the commitment to the power of the European single market and the social market economy. Six-year plans are difficult because the planning horizon is so long that the plan has to be permanently corrected. We are experiencing this right now. Covid is history; we have long since been dealing with the consequences of the war in Ukraine, the crisis in the Middle East and the refugee crisis. The consequences of these crises are affecting other member states. In addition, there are planning, administrative and tendering problems.
Budget controllers are now increasingly checking on disbursements to member states, what do you see?
The funds are hardly traceable. The Commission denies the European Court of Auditors unrestricted and permanent access to the relevant databases. Even we, as budget controllers from the Parliament, have problems obtaining adequate data. The Commission indicates a ministry or an authority as the final recipient of European funds. That is interesting, but not what we want to know. Surely the auditors must be able to examine tenders and project expenditures in detail. The Commission allows this only to a very limited extent because it considers this the responsibility of the member states. However, anyone who has read the Court of Auditors’ reports carefully in recent years will have noticed that Member States with low administrative capacity or with problems with the rule of law stand out with massive irregularities, especially in the area of tenders and project awards. If we don’t even know where the money is spent, we can’t audit. There is a lack of transparency.
But the Commission can only disburse if the member states have demonstrably completed their milestones.
True enough. We know that across the EU last year, 15 of the 281 milestones and targets were either not satisfactorily met or did not meet the eligibility criteria, which is more than five percent. The review of milestones and targets is subject to a negotiation process. In the process, there is wide latitude as to what is or is not considered “satisfactory.” The Commission then takes the position that it has already fulfilled its monitoring function. However, it is necessary to verify whether the planned projects are implemented and running. There is no status of concrete implementation.
Then you need to contact the member states…
The member states also refuse to provide insight into the concrete realization of the projects. Incidentally, they also deny it to the national parliaments.
What else stands out?
Double funding, the financing of nationally recurring expenditures, and tendering problems. For example, the Spanish government has simply booked recurring payments it has made from its national budget since 2017 through the RRF. It labeled it differently, declaring it as a new project to support a specific measure. According to the legal requirements, this is explicitly forbidden. In Slovakia, double funding was identified for the first time, where a project was funded by the European Social Fund and the RRF. In both cases applies: this has nothing to do with the Covid Reconstruction Fund.
Has the Spanish government ensured that the conditions are met?
The Spanish government has undertaken to carry out a fundamental pension reform, as the instability of the Spanish pension system is seen as a possible future trouble spot. This reform is a prerequisite for meeting a milestone and thus for the money to be approved. However, the Spanish pension reform proposal is more window dressing than sustainable. I am curious to see how the Commission will deal with it.
And in other member states?
We note that there are major implementation problems in Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria. In France, for example, a project originally planned for carbon savings in steel production was exchanged. The Commission ultimately waves the exchange of projects through because otherwise the money can not be disbursed.
What is your final conclusion?
I do not consider this type of funding to be sustainable. The Commission is required by the Treaty to monitor the use of the money. After all, this is taxpayer money. It has to know what the money is actually being used for. I have some sympathy for pre-funding, but disbursing funds years before projects begin does not make sense. Moreover, I question 100 percent funding, as it often leads to a lack of European added value or only generates mere windfall profits. We need a lot of money for competitiveness, new technologies and innovations, and we also have crises to deal with. The EU has too little money for it to be stashed away for years and then be only partly spent in a target-oriented way. We need to learn serious lessons from these mistakes.
The Battery Regulation is a highly ambitious project of the European Union. It is about structuring a product’s entire life cycle and value chain more sustainably. The aim is to create a circular economy that makes Europe less dependent on third countries. Due to the transport and energy transition, batteries are considered one of the key industries of the future. So far, Europe has been highly dependent on China, which, according to the European Court of Auditors, accounted for a full 76 percent of global production capacity in 2021.
And it is a lucrative business field. The consulting firm McKinsey calculates that the demand for lithium-ion batteries will increase by 27 percent annually through 2030 – from 700 gigawatt to 4.7 terawatt hours. This will create a market with a turnover of 400 billion dollars along the value chain. The Battery Regulation is intended to secure Europe’s market share in the long term.
To achieve this, the Battery Regulation focuses, among other things, on the following core instruments:
“Overall, the idea of the Battery Regulation is to build sustainable business models in the context of the EU Green Deal and to incentivize them to not fall behind in global competition,” Achim Teuber sums up the Battery Regulation. Teuber is an analyst at the sustainability consultancy SystemIQ.
Christoph Lienemann, Managing Director at PEM Motion – a consulting firm and engineering service provider in the field of e-mobility – argues that the Battery Regulation also pursues geopolitical goals despite all the sustainability considerations. “Since we still have a comparatively small battery industry in Germany and Europe, it is also a matter of keeping as many raw materials as possible here on site and finding energy- and resource-efficient solutions for production and recycling. This minimizes dependencies – and we are not only competing with Asia here.”
This creates an enormous pressure situation for China as the world market leader. Europe is the largest export market for manufacturers from the People’s Republic. Its market share in car batteries alone is 34 percent. However, the new regulations have not been received as negatively as the media often made them out to be. “In discussions with Chinese suppliers, it is clear that they are already beginning to prepare for the requirements and are willing to comply with them. For instance, the largest manufacturer in China has publicly announced that production will be CO2-neutral by 2025 and the entire supply chain by 2035,” says Teuber.
And Gerrit Bockey, expert for Battery Production Technologies at PEM Motion and head of Battery-News, adds: “Basically, there were discussions about whether this was green protectionism. But there was much more discussion about it being an incentive to become more established in the market.” One example is the carbon footprint. Batteries from China come to Europe packing 105 grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hour – partly because of the energy mix during production. Local producers (including Chinese ones, of course) are 20 to 30 percent below that. “There are companies along the entire value chain that are setting up in Europe to have some advantage when entering the market within the framework of the Battery Regulation. It incentivizes them to leave their home market and invest in Europe,” Bockey adds.
It is also clear that compliance with the Battery Regulation will be difficult without Chinese investment. According to Teuber, it would take an additional investment of 62 billion euros by 2030 to comply with the Battery Regulation targets – 44 billion for cell production, 12 billion for cathode material production and 6 billion for anode material production. “What matters is who makes the investments and who has the capabilities to implement them. Currently, 90 percent of anodes and cathodes come from China and 60 percent of EVs. For these companies, it is, of course, interesting to make their investments here and comply with the requirements,” Teuber concludes.
This is one reason why investments from China in the battery sector have increased. The Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS) calculated that these investments represented 57 percent (4.5 billion euros) of total Chinese investments in Europe in 2022. This mainly involves start-ups rather than takeovers. “A handful of large projects – almost exclusively in the automotive industry – are behind the rise in greenfield investments. Chinese battery giants such as CATL, Envision AESC and SVOLT invested in plants in Germany, the UK, France and Hungary,” MERICS summarizes.
Let’s face the facts and stop talking about Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni as we would like her to be but as she really is. About a year ago, she and her government took the lead in Italy with the slogan “We are ready,” claiming to be a new force ready to transform the country. Unfortunately, that rhetoric quickly drifted away from reality.
Giorgia Meloni now finds herself in a precarious position, desperately seeking new alibis to mask her growing incompetence and lack of consistency. With her main ally, Matteo Salvini, who leads the far-right Lega party, she seems to have adopted a strategy of denouncing, stigmatizing and making excuses at any cost. The recent mass influx of migrants to Lampedusa shows that she is trapped in her propaganda and contradictions.
During the Italian elections, she promised a naval blockade to stop smugglers, reaffirming the nation’s independence from Europe. Since she has been in power, however, the number of irregular migrant arrivals in Italy has increased significantly, from 105,129 in 2022 to 133,617 in the first nine months of 2023, according to the Italian Interior Ministry.
She is now calling for European solidarity, but her allies in Poland and Hungary have so far blocked any European solution. She is not taking the time to look for common strategies. In Budapest, however, alongside Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán – who has long opposed a European strategy in the migration crisis – she had enough time to declare herself the defender of God and the (traditional, of course!) family. We hope that this is not happening without his blessing.
Moreover, Poland has so far been reluctant to show solidarity with Italy, and the governments of Hungary and the Czech Republic have only recently rejected negotiations on the regulation to “manage the migration crisis.”
These political contradictions are obvious. Giorgia Meloni has so far been the ally of her actual opponents and the opponent of her potential allies. The contradictions she faces are the same as those of the French and European far-right. Marine Le Pen and Matteo Salvini criticized European intervention in migration, while Marion Maréchal called for European Union action and Giorgia Meloni supported European solidarity.
This shows a clear split among nationalists, and even within the same government, as in Italy, where Giorgia Meloni and Matteo Salvini hold opposing positions.
In June, Italy supported the new European Pact on Asylum and Migration, which aims to better distribute refugees within the European Union. Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour, aligned with the nationalist governments of Hungary and Poland, on the other hand, criticized the measure, illustrating the nationalists’ inability to find common solutions.
The stricken Giorgia Meloni tries to hide her inadequacies and inconsistencies by identifying scapegoats. In this way, she wants to distract from the fact that she cannot keep her election promises.
The intention is to show strength, identity, stamina, and the ability to escape the dictates and “conspiracies” of Europe, migrants, banks, NGOs, LGBTQI+, and multinational corporations. However, this clearly shows a weakness rather than a strength. We are in a phase of obfuscation, mass distraction, and propaganda that could last until the European elections in June 2024.
Meloni’s control over public media in Italy is not conducive to diversity of debate. Migration can only be managed through European cooperation, not competition or confrontation. It is crucial to use all available levers such as visas, development aid and trade agreements to achieve greater cooperation among countries of origin.
This requires concerted action by European countries, especially France, Italy, Germany and Spain, as well as by European institutions. Giorgia Meloni seems to have understood recently that the understanding between Italy and France is crucial for an effective European solution to the migration issue, as her meeting in late September with President Emmanuel Macron in Rome has shown.
The just-reached agreement on managing the migration crisis situation is a first result. It is encouraging that the dialogue was constructive and a majority was found, without Poland and Hungary, who once again voted against it. This is a very useful small step towards a comprehensive agreement.
The meeting of Euro-Mediterranean Heads of State and Government in Malta at the end of September was an opportunity to reaffirm the need to move forward quickly and together on this issue. We will see whether a sense of responsibility will prevail over electoral tactics in the coming weeks – in Rome as elsewhere.
Because it is imperative that the new European Pact on Asylum and Migration, strongly desired by France and the European Commission, be finally adopted in consultation with the European Parliament and implemented as soon as possible.
If Europeans give in to “every man for himself,” the problems will be greater for all. We as Europeans can regain control by respecting our common values and protecting our common interests.
Sandro Gozi is a Member of the European Parliament and belongs to the Renew Group. He was Secretary of State for European Affairs in Italy from 2014 to 2018.
