At the invitation of her "friend" Matteo Salvini, Marine Le Pen, the former president of France's Rassemblement National (RN), traveled to Pontida, near Bergamo, Italy, on Sunday, September 17. She appeared alongside the leader of the Northern League, a far-right party. Her attendance at Salvini's annual event in the beating heart of the League illustrates the pair's close political proximity, recalling the preferences of the RN in Italy. It also brings confusion within the country's ruling coalition.
On the previous day, Le Pen held an annual rally in Beaucaire, southern France. Appearing all smiles in a video, she announced her attendance at Pontida, where, since 1990, the League had been extolling the passions of autonomy. Today, it promotes radical right-wing populism.
Why Len Pen and not Jordan Bardella, the front-runner for the RN in next year's European elections? "The invitation was addressed to Marine Le Pen, with whom the friendly and political bond is stronger," the RN said, adding Bardella and Salvini exchanged views in July via videoconference. In April, Bardella, still largely unknown in his family's home country –where he often travels – had been received privately by Salvini, deputy prime minister and infrastructure minister in the Meloni government. Since then, the configuration has changed within the right-wing coalition led by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, where the League, on the one hand, and Forza Italia (FI), on the other, are sometimes turbulent allies. The prospect of the European elections next June, when each party will go its way, does not help.
While all its branches aim to build an alternative right-wing European majority by breaking the current alliance between center-right and center-left in the European Parliament, whether or not to include the RN is divisive. "We're inviting Marine Le Pen to remind everyone that the European right won't achieve anything if it doesn't unite under the Italian model," Marco Zanni, a League MEP and chairman of the Identity and Democracy group in the European Parliament, to which the RN and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) belong, told Le Monde.
At a European level, Meloni's Fratelli d'Italia (FI) party intends to be the driving force behind the conservatives and is still dreaming of an alliance with the European People's Party (EPP) –which brings together the conservative right – of which FI is a historic, albeit weakened, pillar. However, the union of these three right-wing parties comes up against a fierce resistance that remains vivid in the face of Salvini's French and German allies. Manfred Weber, the president of the EPP, recently reiterated his opposition, as did Antonio Tajani, the secretary of FI and also a deputy prime minister, after the announcement of Le Pen's visit to Pontida. "We cannot ally ourselves with Le Pen because our values are different from hers," he said, while Fratelli d'Italia stayed cautiously silent about the visit, saying Salvini could invite whomever he likes.
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