Meloni meets Orban in key week for EU top jobs - TopNews - Ansa.it

Premier Giorgia Meloni meets
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Rome on Monday as part
of a mini-tour also taking in Paris and Berlin by the latter
ahead of his country’s duty presidency of the EU.


The meeting comes before this week’s EU summit, which is set to
be important in relation to the EU top jobs following this
month’s European elections.


Meloni and Orban have good ties and see eye-to-eye on issues
such as combatting illegal immigration and declining birth rates
and setting limits on shared EU sovereignty.


Orban, however, does not share the Italian government’s staunch
support of Ukraine as it fights the Russian forces of invasion.


At the EU level, Meloni is the president of the European
Conservatives and Reformists Party (ECR), which her right-wing
Brothers of Italy (FdI) party belongs to, while Orban’s Fidesz
is not in a European group after pulling out of the centre-right
European People’s Party (EPP) EPP two years ago.


Meloni, whose FdI maintained its position as Italy’s strongest
party in the EU elections, winning close to 29% of the vote
here, is set to demand a top Commission post for Italy.


There is talk the Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s
EPP could bring the ECR into the ruling majority in the European
Parliament at the expense of the Greens.


Orban’s role in the negotiations over the EU top jobs is widely
expected to be less central, in part due to his stance on
Ukraine.