Leftists Rage as EU Chief Ursula von der Leyen Courts Italy’s Meloni in Bid to Remain in Power

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is facing a leftist revolt after she suggested partnering with the conservatives such as Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in a bid to bolster her chances of clinging onto her leadership position after the EU Parliament elections.

Amid the rising tide of populist sentiment and anger over the failures of the neo-liberal agenda imposed by Brussels, EU chief Ursula von der Leyen is on the hunt for new allies as she seeks a second 5-year term as the president of the European Commission.

In a leadership debate hosted by POLITICO on Monday evening in the Dutch city of Maastricht, the German politician opened the door to joining forces with the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), which are expected to see their ranks swell in the Strasbourg-based EU Parliament after the bloc-wide elections in June.

While opening the door to a partnership between her centrist European People’s Party (EPP) and the ECR, the Commission chief said that it would depend “very much on how the composition of the Parliament is, and who is in what group.”

Yet the mere suggestion of such a partnership of the group which is headlined by Italian PM Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party and the conservative Polish Law and Justice (PiS) party, has riled the anger of the leftist coalition partners from the Socialists and Democrats group and the Greens, upon whom von der Leyen relied upon to push forward a radical green agenda in Europe since 2019.

The socialist candidate for Commission chief, Nicolas Schmit said after the debate: “We will not be able to vote for a program which has been negotiated with the ECR.”

“Either you can deal with the extreme right because you need them, or you say clearly there is no deal possible because they do not respect the fundamental rights our Commission has fought for,” he added.

The candidate for the Greens, meanwhile, Dutch MEP Bas Eickhout said: “What I heard was that she’s not excluding [working with the ECR] … We Greens exclude them and I think this election will then be about this choice.”

“Within ECR you have the same people that want to weaken Europe, that want to water down our green policies,” he added.

Euronews warns the move could “totally backfire”.

Von der Leyen, who ‘failed upwards’ in 2019 from her previous role as Angela Merkel’s defence minister, which left the German military in a “catastrophic” condition, has become a darling of international globalist institutions, with WEF founder Klaus Schwab even referring to her as a “visionary”.

However, her time at the helm of the EU has been mired by a myriad of crises, from the Chinese coronavirus during which she pushed for health passports and other draconian restrictions, to the economic crisis that ensued from the supply chain chaos of the lockdowns, and the energy crisis sparked by the Russian invasion and the war in Ukraine, which the EU’s top diplomat previously acknowledged caught the leadership in Brussels completely off guard.

Meanwhile, under her watch, the bloc has continued to see massive waves of illegal migrants flooding onto the continent from Africa and the Middle East — with little effort from Von der Leyen to stem the tide —  at the same time as hundreds of thousands fled to the EU from Ukraine further stretching strained asylum systems across Europe.

There has also been a popular revolt against the green agenda favoured by von der Leyen and other European elites, with farmers from Portugal to Poland rising up and shutting down critical infrastructure and motorways to protest against onerous environmental regulations and globalist free trade deals allowing foreign agriculture to undercut prices from local farmers.

The combination of these factors is likely to result in large gains for conservatives and populists in the European Parliament elections in June, with right-wing parties projected to come out on top in at least nine EU member states. The rising populist feeling further imperils Von der Leyen’s chances of a second term, which was already on thin ice, as she narrowly surpassed the parliamentary threshold by a margin of nine votes during the leadership contest in 2019.

Although the EU chief has forged close ties with fellow female leader Giorgia Meloni, working closely on payoff deals with Tunisia and Egypt to supposedly clamp down on illegal migration, it is not a foregone conclusion that the European Conservatives and Reformists as a whole would back her re-election bid.

Meloni’s Brothers of Italy is projected to be the largest party within the ECR following the June vote, however, the second-largest party is expected to be the conservative Law and Justice party of Poland, which prior to being removed from power last year had long clashed with Von der Leyen over issues such as abortion, LGBT ideology, and illegal migration.

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