The campaign for the recent European elections was punctuated by appeals for the unity of all right-wing forces in the new European Parliament (EP). Such pleas were put forward by the likes of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, in many ways the leader of European Trumpists, or of Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, who still now struggles to hide his old sympathies for Vladimir Putin.

From their perspective, the plan seemed far from ill-founded. Since the 2009 election, the share of EP seats controlled by parties to the right of the European People’s Party (EPP) increased by an average of about 5% per electoral consultation, now totalling almost one third of the hemicycle. United, these forces would theoretically represent the second biggest, if not the biggest group in the Strasburg assembly, depending on how far their aggregation reaches.

This theoretical scenario has so far failed to come to fruition. Somewhat surprisingly, however, since the European elections, far-right strategists in quest for unity have been offered a helping hand from an unlikely quarter: Europe’s socialist and liberal grandees. Their post-electoral moves in view of establishing the new EP balances, electing the new President of the EU executive and staffing her College of Commissioners openly aimed to prevent the successful integration of more moderate right-wing forces within the European mainstream. Today, such forces are arguably represented mainly within the European Conservatives and Reformists Party, presided over by Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

A far-sighted strategy to stabilise the European political system certainly requires the gradual co-optation of at least some of them within it, encouraging them to moderate their position and move further away from more radically oppositional groupings, chiefly the Patriots for Europe, where Orbán’s Fidesz, Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National and Matteo Salvini’s League sit.

Instead, the socialists’ and liberals’ tactics are expressly calculated to achieve the opposite: excluding the Conservatives as much as possible from EU power structures, thus gradually pushing them in the arms of the Patriots, who have been trying hard to lure as many of them as possible away from cooperation with moderate centre-right parties. So far, they achieved their main success on this front with the Spanish nationalists of Vox, who left the ECR for the Patriots, allowing this new grouping to become the third biggest in the EP.

First, the socialists’ and liberals’ highest representatives among EU country leaders, Olaf Scholz and Emmanuel Macron, openly snubbed Meloni in post-electoral negotiations on top EU jobs, putting a pre-cooked deal to her for approval in a way that was clearly designed to push her into opposition. She only partly took the bait, as she voted against Kallas and Costa but abstained on Von der Leyen, keeping open the option of her party’s MEPs subsequently supporting her in the Parliament.

Later on, however, liberal and, especially, socialist leaders in the EP made their support for Von der Leyen’s second term instrumentally dependent on her not having to rely for re-election on the Conservatives’ votes, thus inducing the EPP candidate to privilege the Greens’ support in order to avoid too many defections from left-of-centre MEPs. This time, Meloni did fall into the trap and ended up instructing her party’s MEPs to oppose Von der Leyen’s re-appointment, despite the two women’s excellent relation and the Italian Prime Minister’s clear efforts to play a constructive role at the EU level until then.  

The latest episode in this sad saga that sees socialist and liberal politicking to prevent a process of ‘normalisation’ evidently in the interest of EU stability is the recent dispute over the empowerment of Raffaele Fitto, Italy’s Minister for European Affairs and Meloni’s candidate for Commissioner, with an executive Vice-Presidency in Von der Leyen’s new team. Liberal, and especially socialist, protestations against the appointment of a ‘far-right’ politician to such an important post appear ludicrous. Fitto is essentially a Christian democrat long affiliated with the EPP, whose defining feature throughout his career has been moderate pragmatism.

They also conveniently ignore that the elections’ results – which saw only the EPP and forces to their right growing, with socialists remaining stable and Liberals and Greens suffering heavy losses – necessarily require a rightward tilt in the Commission’s structure and policies to ensure legitimacy and accountability. What safer way of achieving it than by empowering a pragmatic, experienced and Europeanist figure like Fitto?

Perhaps most importantly, achieving a full integration of moderate and constructive ECR parties such as Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia within the European mainstream and the EU power system seems the safest way to drive them away from the ever-present sirens of right-wing radicals. The latter strategically pursue that unity of right-wing forces that would allow them to conveniently mobilise conservative votes and energies at the service of an agenda of revolutionary rupture with the current European and Atlantic structures.

The creation of three different right-wing groups in the new EP has only temporarily stalled this prospect, not permanently averted it. Should Donald Trump be back in the White House in a few months, for example, the Patriots’ offensive in favour of right-wing unity in the EP would certainly be boosted. This is not least because one of the key disagreements that prevented it so far, that over support for Ukraine and relations with the US and Russia, would then likely be removed or attenuated by the new US President’s positions.

All supporters of European integration should have an interest in making sure that constructive right-wing forces willing to abide by EU rules and cooperate with EU institutions have found their place within the new Commission and the EU system at large by then. Do socialists and liberals still count themselves among those?