Firebrand Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is well ahead of her rivals as Italians, Estonians, Latvians, Maltese, Czechs and Slovaks vote in the European Parliament elections on Saturday.
Meloni could be prepared to act as kingmaker for the next president of the European Commission if her Brothers of Italy (FdI) make big gains.
Current Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has been openly courting Meloni in the hope of securing confirmatory votes from the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, a pan-European Eurosceptic bloc that Meloni now leads and whose ranks the FdI candidates seek join if elected to the European Parliament.
As the third most populous country in the EU, Italy can send a total of 76 delegates to the 720-seat European Parliament, putting anyone who earns big there in a powerful position at EU level.
According to a “poll poll” compiled by the news website Politico, the conservative FdI is in first place with 27%, six points ahead of the center-left Democratic Party.
Saturday marks the third day of four EU-wide elections, in which different countries vote on different days. It’s election day for Latvia, Malta and Slovakia; the second and final day of elections for the Czech Republic and the first of two for Italy and Estonia.
Slovakia’s left-wing nationalist prime minister Roberto Fico went into combat on Wednesday after surviving a May 15 assassination attempt that shocked Europe. Fico was shot several times in an attack that appears to have been politically motivated.
The recovering prime minister published a video on Wednesday in which he said that “a Slovak opposition activist” had committed the attempt on his life”, adding that there was no reason to believe that the attack was the act of a ” lonely lunatic.”
He voted in a hospital in Bratislava. The 59-year-old posted a photo on Facebook on Saturday, leaning on a crutch and inserting his ballot into a mobile ballot box.
“We must elect deputies who support peace initiatives and not the continuation of war,” he wrote regarding Ukraine. After taking office in October, Slovakia suspended state arms deliveries to Ukraine, which has been defending itself against a large-scale Russian invasion for more than two years.
Fico’s party, SMER, leads the polls with 23%, two points ahead of the liberal Progressive Slovakia party.
The first preliminary results indicating the composition of the next European Parliament will only be released on Sunday night, after all members of the 27-nation bloc have voted. They will be updated in the early hours of Monday.
