EU socialist group, Spain’s PSOE rejects alliance with Meloni

Spain’s Ecological Transition Minister Teresa Ribera, the lead candidate in the European elections for Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s PSOE party, clarified on Tuesday that any kind of political agreement with Italian Prime Minister and ECR group leader Giorgia Meloni or any other “ultra” force in Europe is off the table.

Ribera, a likely candidate for the energy commissioner’s post in the future European executive made the intentions of her party and the wider EU group clear during a series of press conferences with Spanish candidates in the EU election race organised by Euractiv’s partner EFE.

“I have never opened the door to a pact with Meloni,” said Ribera.

It would be a mistake to think that the S&D could even consider a pact with “a far-right force”, she said, referring to Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia, which governs in coalition with the conservatives of Forza Italia and Matteo Salvini’s far-right Lega.

Ribera’s words were an attempt to end the controversy that had arisen a few days earlier in Madrid over the hypothesis of a possible pact between the S&D and the ECR, in which the far-right VOX, the third force in the Spanish parliament, is represented.

“I have never opened the door to a pact with Meloni. The far-right is always far-right,” said the PSOE’s lead candidate in the EU election race.

“The position of the Social Democratic Group (S&D) has been clear from the outset,” she added.

“What we need is for the traditional right (PPE/EPP) to recover the conviction of how important it is to continue building a European project for all,” she added.

Meloni and Orban not the same in PP’s eyes

While there is speculation about possible pacts between Meloni and Marine Le Pen’s Identity and Democracy (ID) group, which is seen as more “hawkish” than the ECR, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, head of Spanish opposition party Partido Popular (EPP), raised eyebrows in Spain with a recent comment about Meloni, whom he said he did not consider to be an “ultra” leader.

In an interview broadcast by the private radio station Onda Cero, Núñez Feijóo said that the EPP “should not make pacts with the extreme right”, but qualified this by saying that he did not consider Meloni to be part of that group, as she was “pro-European”.

Núñez Feijóo’s right-wing party has been governing in several regions and municipalities in sometimes very controversial pacts with the hard-right VOX since 2023.

“We should not enter into pacts with the far-right in Europe (…) Meloni is defending the rule of law, has signed the immigration pact and declares herself pro-European. And in this context, I continue to say that Meloni is not equivalent to (Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor) Orban,” the PP leader said.

Feijóo’s words are in line with recent statements by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (EPP), who left the door open to possible cooperation with Meloni’s ECR group, which includes VOX, Fratelli d’Italia and Poland’s conservative Law and Justice party (PiS).

“They (the EPP and von der Leyen) have made a first mistake. I don’t know if they are realising it or not, but I do know that this has to be stopped at the ballot box,” Ribera warned on Tuesday.

(Fernando Heller | EuroEFE.Euractiv.es)

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