Centrist leaders seek to appease Giorgia Meloni at EU summit

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Giorgia Meloni is integral to an agreement to grant Ursula von der Leyen a second term as European Commission president, Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk said, as centrist leaders sought to appease the Italian premier after previously cutting her out of negotiations.

Meloni has said a deal to reappoint von der Leyen and shortlist candidates for two other top posts that was cooked up by three centrist parties without her or her hard-right group’s involvement was a “mistake” that disrespected Italy’s importance.

“The decision is for Madame Meloni and other leaders . . . There is no Europe without Italy and there is no decision without Prime Minister Meloni, that is obvious,” Tusk, who was one of the six male leaders who negotiated the jobs deal last week, said on Thursday.

The jobs package, which also earmarks former Portuguese prime minister António Costa for European Council president and Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas as the bloc’s chief diplomat, is being discussed by EU leaders at a summit in Brussels.

It requires support from only 20 of the 27 leaders to pass, but some EU officials are nervous about von der Leyen securing a second term without the explicit support of Italy, the EU’s third-largest economy and one of its six founding members.

Two senior EU diplomats told the Financial Times that the other leaders should use the summit discussions to make peace with Meloni and respect her clout, in a bid to win her around to the deal.

“Meloni was treated badly and there were surely other ways to handle this,” one of them said.

The three parties involved in the negotiations — von der Leyen’s centre-right European People’s party, Costa’s Socialist & Democrats and Kallas’s liberal Renew group — came first, second and fourth in this month’s European parliament elections.

If all their members voted in favour, the three parties would have a majority that would secure von der Leyen the 361 seats she needs to win a confirmation vote in the 720-strong chamber.

But due to potential defections in the secret ballot, von der Leyen could also need some votes from Meloni’s European Conservatives and Reformists group, which came third in the election.

Several MEPs in the ERC and Renew have already said they will not support a second five-year term for von der Leyen, with some blaming her stance towards Israel, parliament officials said.

“The member states have to smartly make a proposal that can get a majority in parliament,” said German Chancellor Scholz as he arrived at the leaders’ summit.

Scholz, who was one of the six negotiators, on behalf of the Socialists, added that the jobs package “takes into account that such a majority can also be found”.

Tusk told reporters ahead of the summit that Meloni’s anger was “a misunderstanding”, and that the choice of negotiators was “only to facilitate the process”.

“No one respects Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Italy more than I do,” Tusk added.

Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, a Liberal, admitted that “anyone” could vote against the proposed deal on the EU’s top jobs. “But the question is always what serves best the interest of Europeans.”

“It’s important to involve Italy and especially the Italian prime minister in these negotiations,” said Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer.

Additional reporting by Javier Espinoza and Paola Tamma in Brussels