“I now have a friendship with (Georgia Meloni). We spontaneously met for dinner during my short stay in Rome. I appreciate her consistency in the fight against illegal immigration and for solid protection of the EU’s external borders,” wrote the Chancellor on X under a photo with Meloni.
“With Italy, Austria has a strong partner at its side, we are pulling in the same direction here. We are both pleased that Austria will also provide the migration commissioner in the future,” wrote Nehammer, with a view to the future task of the outgoing finance minister Magnus Brunner (ÖVP). further. He added that “the fight against illegal migration is one of the future questions of the European Union.”
Meloni is head of the right-wing populist party “Fratelli d’Italia” and has ruled the third largest EU state since a clear victory in the parliamentary elections last year. The right-wing populist Lega, which is allied with the FPÖ, and the ÖVP sister party Forza Italia are junior partners in her cabinet. Nehammer resigned after his ÖVP’s defeat in the National Council election, but remains at the head of the federal government. He has spoken out in favor of election winner Herbert Kickl (FPÖ) being tasked with leading exploratory talks to form a new federal government, but does not want to sit in a government with him.
Meloni has long been courted by politicians from the European People’s Party (EPP) like Nehammer. At the EU level, it continues to make common cause with, among others, the right-wing nationalist Polish PiS, the Czech conservative ruling party ODS or the right-wing populist Sweden Democrats (SD) and Finns within the framework of the “European Conservatives and Reformers” (ECR) group. Efforts to form a large alliance of EU right-wing parties collapsed after the European elections, among other things because of divergences in Ukraine policy. The FPÖ joined forces with, among others, the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, the French right-wing populist Marine Le Pen and the Dutch election winner Geert Wilders to form the group “Patriots for Europe” (PfE), which is the third strongest force in the new European Parliament.
