Negotiations are held until the last minute –

Negotiations are ongoing until the last minute in von der Leyen’s entourage to find a solution and ensure the German leader’s second term at the helm of the European Commission. The president has been shuttling between the European Parliament in Brussels for days to meet with the various groups and continues to contact individual delegations and MEPs. Starting next Monday, she will instead travel to Strasbourg, where she will meet the Left group on Monday and then the ECR conservatives on Tuesday morning. The decisive votes will come at the last minute. Because the undecided will negotiate until the last minute and avoid showing their cards. The Greens, 53 MEPs, will try to make a sort of agreement that projects them into the majority, but will decide only following listening to the programmatic lines outlined by von der Leyen on Thursday. The same goes for Fratelli d’Italia, with its 24 votes, which will await Meloni’s decision. “Following Tuesday’s meeting and based on what you say, we will talk with the other delegations and decide what to do,” the Prime Minister said from Washington, “as Italian Prime Minister my sole objective is to bring home the best possible result for Italy.”

“Our vote for Ursula von der Leyen is negative at the moment,” reiterates the head of the Fratelli d’Italia delegation and co-president of ECR ​​in the European Parliament, Nicola Procaccini, but at next week’s meeting “the president will present her program to our group, we will present our requests and then we will see.” An open-minded line that would transform Meloni’s abstention from the European Council at the end of June into support, conditional on the achievement of certain objectives for Italy. The Democratic Party, with its 21 seats, is moving towards a yes that is taking its time: “We are having an exchange following the hearings. We are parliamentarians, not little robots, so we will not proceed without being fully convinced. The premises are good, but we need more clarity on some issues: rule of law, social agility, permanent fiscal capacity of the EU, cohesion policies”, is the position of the outgoing head of delegation Brando Benifei, who does not say he is surprised by the phone call between von der Leyen and Stefano Bonaccini, given their acquaintance. The new legislature will begin on Tuesday, with the election of the new president of the European Parliament: the re-election of the Maltese Roberta Metsola is taken for granted, both because she has earned the esteem of all political forces in these last two and a half years, and because it is the result of an agreement between the Populars and the Socialists that will see the alternation with the latter halfway through the legislature, with the highest seat in the hemicycle that should pass to the Democratic Party.

The deadline for submitting candidacies expires on Monday: it is not excluded that the Left and Patriots groups might submit symbolic or disruptive candidacies. In any case, in Italy all the forces, including the League, Brothers of Italy and M5s, are leaning towards a yes to reconfirmation. Meanwhile, the pro-European groups have confirmed their intention to erect a sanitary cordon towards the right-wing ‘Europe of Nations’ and the ‘Patriots’. The latter stresses that it is the third group, voted for by millions of people, and defines the veto of all the other political forces as anti-democratic. On Monday it will meet and decide how to proceed for the election of the president, vice-presidents, but also on the structure of the group, where criticisms have been made by members of the Rassemblement National for the election of the League’s Roberto Vannacci, which took place by acclamation, among the six vice-presidents. “There is no division at all,” a spokesperson commented. It is a new group formed just this week and we will take all the decisions in due time”. The general also displays confidence: “I do not see Rassemblement National being able to express vetoes, especially following a vote that has already been conducted”.