Her overtures to Ms Meloni has led to talk that the Italian leader could join the establishment group instead and make her conversation to a conventional conservative complete.
The EPP is the largest group in the European Parliament, which can amend or block EU legislation. For years, the EPP has worked in an informal grand coalition with the centre-Left Socialists and Democrats.
But the pro-EU political establishment in Brussels is spooked by polls suggesting that hard-Right, often Eurosceptic, parties are set to perform strongly in the June 9 poll.
“Today there is room to build a different majority in the European Parliament, and for different policies,” Ms Meloni, whose Brothers of Italy party is set to win the elections in Italy, said on Monday.
Ms Le Pen is predicted to trounce Mr Macron’s party in the vote and return the largest number of MEPs in a blow to the French president’s influence in the parliament.
Polls predict anti-EU parties will win in nine member states – Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Slovakia. They should come second in yet more members, including Germany.
Nationalist MEPs looking to limit EU overreach could outnumber MEPs from the EPP, according to a Politico poll this week.
Fragmented by Ukraine war
That will not necessarily translate to a shift of power because the European Right is fragmented over the war in Ukraine and Putin and between different political groups.
The EPP is expected to remain the largest-single group and pro-EU leaders will continue to be comfortably in the majority in the influential European Council of member states.
Parties form groups in the European Parliament, which qualify for extra speaking time, influence and EU funding.
After the elections, there will be a period of furious negotiating as new groups, which must have at least 23 MEPs from a minimum of seven different countries, are formed.
Ms Meloni’s Brothers of Italy currently dominates the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, which was formed by the Tories after they left the EPP before Brexit.
Poland’s Eurosceptic Law and Justice is also part of the group, which Mr Orban’s Fidesz is angling to join after effectively being forced out of the EPP over rule of law issues.
However, Ms Meloni, a supporter of Kyiv, has prevented that so far over the Hungarian leader’s kowtowing to Moscow.
Beyond the pale
Ms Le Pen’s National Rally sits in the hard-Right Identity and Democracy (ID), with Matteo Salvini’s League. The League is Ms Meloni’s coalition partners in Rome with the EPP’s Forza Italia.
Some EPP members could stomach working with the ECR, including Forza Italia.
But the ID is seen as beyond the pale by the pro-EU parties, which have formed a cordon sanitaire to shut it out of any influence.
Other ID members include Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party from the Netherlands and, until very recently, the Alternative For Germany (AFD), which was expelled after its lead candidate claimed not all members of the SS were criminals.
The defenestration of the pro-Russian AFD, removes one stumbling block for the putative alliance between the two queens of the European hard-Right.
Nicolai von Ondarza, at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs said “a more fundamental change” was possible because of the split.
He said Mrs Le Pen, who has attempted to disavow her past admiration of Putin, could argue for an alliance of Ms Meloni, Mr Orban and Geert Wilders in “a united far-Right sans the most radical part”.
But he warned the barriers could still prove too high. Some ID members view Ms Meloni as a traitorous sell-out to the establishment.
“Too many queen bees and the beehive descends into anarchy,” Daniele Albertazzi, co-director at the Centre for Britain and Europe think tank, who suggested Ms Le Pen might resent playing second fiddle to Ms Meloni in a new group.
Sanitising her image
Any alliance also looks like being more to Ms Le Pen’s benefit than Ms Meloni’s, as the former looks to further sanitise her image before an attempt to win the next French presidential elections.
Meanwhile, Mrs von der Leyen has refused to rule out working with Ms Meloni’s ECR.
But this has angered the EPP’s centre-Left allies and the Greens, who are now threatening to block her reappointment as commission president after the election.
“There will be a price for this and Meloni will want to have an important position, say for somebody of her party in the next commission… but then you will have the extreme Right in the commission,” said Karel Lannoo, CEO of the Centre for European Policy Studies think tank.
Ms Meloni was a very clever operator, he added. She was able to speak at a Vox rally, deal with Mrs von der Leyen, while containing her combative coalition partner Mr Salvini in the ID group.
“Meloni has always swung between the populist radical Right and the more traditional conservative Right,” said Arturo Varvelli, of the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank.
He said her group had voted seven times out of 10 with the EPP since she had been in government in Italy but it would be “difficult” for her to join Mrs von der Leyen’s party.
“It is likely that she will stand firm and try to capitalise as much as possible on her position as a ‘bridge’ between the two political areas,” he said.
Fabian Zuleeg, chief executive of the European Policy Centre think tank in Brussels, said: “I would think that Meloni will continue to try to play the current game, far-Right at home but still working with the EU at the highest level, and supporting von der Leyen in return for more emphasis on issues such as migration.”
Francesco Galietti, founder of the Policy Sonar consultancy in Rome, said Ms Meloni had carved herself out “the coveted status of indispensable go-between for actors across the political spectrum”.
She is, he added, the “the only accepted interlocutor for both, say, Macron and Orban”.
An alliance with Ms Le Pen would give “Meloni a bigger critical mass, but in our view there is a serious risk that it will confine Meloni into a Euro-political ghetto. A larger and deeper ghetto, possibly, but still a ghetto”.
For now, Ms Meloni is having her cake and eating it; a Eurosceptic populist at home and increasingly part of the powerful establishment in Brussels.
