The party of the Italian prime minister does not have exact equivalents with those of the French extreme right, although it is closer to Zemmour than to National Regrouping
Far-right Marine Le Pen congratulated Giorgia Meloni and Matteo Salvini after they were respectively sworn in as Italy’s Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister. “Throughout Europe, patriots come to power and, with them, this Europe of nations that we want,” the president of National Regrouping (former National Front) wrote on Twitter.
His rival, Éric Zemmour, leader of the far-right Reconquista party, also congratulated Meloni on the same social network for her appointment as president of the Italian Council of Ministers.
Marine Le Pen – daughter of far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the National Front – has been a presidential candidate three times, but unlike Meloni, she has failed to come to power. Le Pen, 54, was defeated in April by Emmanuel Macron, who obtained 58.55% of the vote, compared to 41.45% for the far-right in the second round of the French presidential elections.
Although the two policies are often compared, Regrouping National is ideologically closer to Matteo Salvini’s La Liga than to the Brothers of Italy, the new Italian prime minister’s far-right party. Le Pen and Meloni, 45, have points in common. Both lead far-right parties. The two charge against Brussels and demand a firm immigration policy in their respective countries.
But there are also differences between them. The new head of the Italian Government defends her retirement at the age of 67. Le Pen, economically more protectionist, wants the French to receive a pension at age 62.
Marion Marechal
Meloni’s party, which has used the fascist slogan ‘God, country and family’, is ideologically more conservative than that of the French leader. Meloni, a mother of one son, is against abortion, same-sex marriage and adoption by same-sex couples.
The leader of Regrouping National, divorced and mother of three children, no longer questions the Veil law, which decriminalized abortion in France in 1975. Unlike her father, who considered homosexuality “a biological and social anomaly”, Le Pen promised during the last general campaign that if she were elected president “she would not take away any rights from the French” and that homosexual marriage would remain legal in the country.
Meloni and Zemmour have closer political agendas. The leader of Reconquista, like Italian politics, is conservative from the social point of view and liberal in terms of his economic perspective. Meloni has managed to do in Italy what Zemmour dreamed of doing in France: a union of the right and the extreme right.
If one had to look for a Gallic figure with which to compare her, Meloni is perhaps more like Marion Maréchal, Le Pen’s niece and granddaughter of the founder of the National Front. Marion 32 years old and a muse of the most traditionalist extreme right, the young woman betrayed her aunt and supported Zemmour in the last elections.
Marion Márechal, who no longer uses the surname Le Pen, considers that the Brothers of Italy are not extreme right, but a conservative party. Marine Le Pen’s niece is convinced that Meloni’s rise to power will help “indirectly protect the French, since she wants to launch a maritime blockade against the arrival of illegal immigrants” on Italian shores and Europe.
Zemmour saw in the victory of the leader of the Brothers of Italy proof that “coming to power is possible” for a party like his. The leader of Reconquista dreams that he and his formation will be able to conquer power in France in 2027, the same thing that Meloni has managed to do now in Italy.
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