Giorgia Meloni has confounded her critics yet again as she proves herself to be the most important leader in the European Union. She has shown in the past two days that she is the vital bridge between America and Europe.
As a result, Italy looks set to play a major role on the world stage which it has never done before since the founding of the Italian Republic in 1948 after the defeat of Mussolini’s fascist regime.
In Washington on Thursday, where Meloni met Donald Trump for a bilateral summit, she achieved a major breakthrough when the US President accepted her invitation to come to Rome ‘to meet Europe’ about tariffs. The meeting will take place ‘in the very near future’, according to a joint press statement issued later. ‘There will be a trade deal, 100 per cent,’ Trump said. This was the first time he has said such a thing.
In headlines, the Washington Post called Italy’s first female prime minister the ‘Trump Whisperer’; The New York Times spoke of their ‘special rapport’.
However embarrassing for the EU that it is Meloni, not Ursula von der Leyen, who is talking to Trump on behalf of Europe, the EU Commission President felt compelled to back Meloni’s trip to the White House. They had several preparatory phone conversations beforehand and what EU sources described as a ‘positive’ phone call afterwards. An EU spokesman was forced to confess that Meloni’s endeavours were ‘much appreciated’.
But it is hardly surprising Trump has chosen Meloni instead of von der Leyen to talk to given his contempt for the EU which he recently dismissed as founded ‘to screw the United States’.
Be that as it may, Meloni and von der Leyen have become allies of a sort as a result in particular of shared views on the tough choices required to solve the Mediterranean migrant crisis. She has the gift of being able to get on with people of very different political views which is why she is the ideal go-between.
Her good rapport with von der Leyen is a far cry from September 2022, when the EU Commission President warned, as Meloni came to power and most global media were calling her the ‘far right heir to Mussolini’ and ‘a threat to democracy’, that the EU had ‘tools’ to stop her if necessary.
Meloni’s mainly left-wing critics have insisted that she must choose between Europe and America. But she has chosen instead, she says, the West. She told Trump at the press conference in the Oval Office after their meeting that her aim was to ‘make the West great again’ which she regards as a civilisation not a geographical space.
Many Italian media outlets, which are predominantly left-wing, had dubbed her meeting with Trump ‘Mission Impossible’. But it turned out to be, if not ‘Mission Accomplished’, at least ‘We have lift off’.
Yesterday Vice-President J.D. Vance, who was present at the White House meeting, flew into Rome to meet her and continue the talks held the previous day in Washington, above all about tariffs and Ukraine.
At their press conference before a two-hour meeting at Palazzo Chigi, the official residence of Italian prime ministers, Vance told Meloni who had just spoken in Italian to the journalists present that it is ‘the most beautiful language imaginable’ and that even if she had called him ‘a jerk’ he would not have been offended. He also said he appreciated the friendship between ‘our two nations’ and ‘between us personally’.
‘I couldn’t help as we were driving around these streets with my wife and three young children… thinking that this is a place that was built by people who love humans and who love God,’ Vance added. ‘The streets, the buildings, the beautiful landscape and cityscape, I think it really lifts up the human spirit.’
On tariffs, he said: ‘We are having some very big trade negotiations not just between Italy and the United States but the whole European Union. We talked a lot about that yesterday with the President and we will follow up on those conversations today.’
On Ukraine, he would tell Meloni that there had been ‘even in the last 24 hours some interesting things to report on,’ he said, which made him ‘optimistic that we can bring this very brutal war to a close.’
Vance, a Catholic convert, came to the Rome with his wife, Usha, and their three small children and will remain until Sunday afternoon. On Friday – Good Friday – he also attended a two-hour service with them at St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. He then visited Castel Gandolfo, the Papal summer palace in the Alban Hills outside Rome, which Pope Francis has never used.
Today he is due to meet the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin. He hopes as well to meet the Pope, who is recovering from double pneumonia, as King Charles and Queen Camilla did last week. But given his hostility to illegal immigrants and the Holy Father’s support for them, Francis may not be all that keen.
Certainly, in Washington on Thursday, Trump was even more effusive in his praise for Meloni than Vance was in Rome on Friday.
The president found it hard to stop himself showering Meloni with compliments in sharp contrast to his ruthlessly rude treatment of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky in February.
Meloni shares many of Trump’s political views – except on tariffs which she has said are ‘mistaken’ – and speaks good English. They first met in December after the official re-opening of Notre Dame in Paris. Elon Musk, who is a friend of hers, introduced them. They got on so well that he invited her to Mar-a-Lago in early January. She was the only EU leader invited to his inauguration later that month.
On Thursday, among other things, Trump said: ‘She’s doing a fantastic job. I would say she’s taken Europe by storm. Everybody loves and respects her and I can’t say that about many people.’
He praised her ‘very tough stand on immigration’, described her as ‘one of the real leaders of the world’, and lamented: ‘I wish more people would be like you.’
Asked if Italy can become America’s strongest ally in Europe he replied: ‘Only if the prime minister remains the prime minister because she’s doing a great job.’
Later, on his social media platform Truth Social, he posted: ‘She loves her country and the impression she left on everyone was FANTASTIC!!!’
Of course, all this could be just part of the art of the deal and totally insincere. Personally, I doubt it.
The only tricky moment came at the post-summit press conference in the Oval Office when an Italian journalist asked Meloni in Italian if she agreed with Trump that Zelensky had started the war in Ukraine.
Rome would be an inspiring place to do a deal on tariffs
Meloni was one of Europe’s most devout supporters of former President Joe Biden’s policy of arming Ukraine who invited her to the White House in March 2024 where he kissed her on the head.
But she is above all a pragmatist and knows that Italy and Europe must stay close to America. She also knows that Ukraine cannot expel Russia from the conquered parts of Ukraine even if in March Trump had not suspended supplies of American weapons. And she now agrees that a peace deal is the only solution even though it will inevitably mean Ukraine losing territory.
She has said she will not send Italian troops to Ukraine to join Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron’s ‘coalition of the willing’ peacekeeping force if it ever happens.
Sitting in the same chair as Zelensky had sat in, with Trump right next to her and Vance on the sofa across from her just as they had been for the Ukrainian President – Meloni replied to the journalist in Italian:
‘There was an invasion and the invader was Putin and Russia, and that is why we are working today to achieve in Ukraine a just peace that is long-lasting.’
‘That was so beautiful,’ Trump said. ‘What the hell did she say?’
The interpreter, sensing trouble, failed to translate what Meloni had said about Putin.
But Trump had got the gist of it anyway.
‘I don’t hold Zelensky responsible but I am not exactly thrilled with the fact that that war started. That was a war that would never have started if I were president,’ he said. ‘I spoke to President Putin about it a lot. It was the apple of his eye. But there is no way he would have gone in if I were president.’
Another first. Trump has not, as far as I know, conceded that before.
Given his volatility, of course, he may just change his mind and refuse to come to Rome. But I cannot possibly imagine him ever going to Brussels to ‘meet Europe’!
Surely Rome, where the 1957 treaty which set up what was then called the Common Market was signed, is a far more inspiring place to do a deal on tariffs. Vice President J.D. Vance will no doubt tell the President as much after his first visit to the Eternal City which he found so uplifting.
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