According to exit polls published at the close of voting, Georgian Meloni’s Brothers of Italy (FdI) party has topped the poll with around 25 percent of the vote, and will likely rule along with its right-wing bloc partners from Matteo Salvini’s League party and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia (FI). After the three parties gained around 45 percent of the vote, they will have a majority in the Italian Parliament. The left’s democratic bloc managed less than 30 percent.
Meloni and her party were clearly the prime beneficiaries of staying out of the previous wide coalition government led by former European Central Bank (ECB) chief Mario Draghi, and she is set to become Italy’s first woman prime minister.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki congratulated Georgia Meloni on her victory with a short social media post.
Former Law and Justice (PiS) Prime Minister Beata Szydło expressed her delight, pointing to the fact that yet another party in the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) alliance in the European Parliament is taking over at the helm of an EU member state’s government.
Michał Wójcik, who is a minister in the PiS government and a close associate of Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro, said Italy is returning to normality.
“The representative of the anti-democratic forces in the EU, Ursula von der Leyen, has suffered a disastrous defeat. The right has won the election in Italy! This is the end of abnormality in the EU and rule by manipulators in the EC,” he wrote.
Senior PiS MEP Jacek Saryusz-Wolski noted that as a result of Meloni’s victory, the ECR political grouping will now become the second-largest such grouping inside the European Parliament measured by the population size of governments controlled by the different European political alliances.
Poland’s liberal opposition have been scathing in their reactions. They are claiming that Meloni is a “post-fascist” politician who is allied with Salvini, who they label “pro-Putin.” They also claim that Berlusconi is “compromised” due to his various legal troubles over the years. The Polish opposition argues that by attaching itself to such allies, PiS will only increase Poland’s alleged isolation within the EU.
