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Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni rises as the opposition leader and voice of reason within the EU.
In the debate over the future of the EU carbon trading system, the EU commission is playing for time. For Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, this offers an opportunity to rise as the opposition leader and voice of reason within the EU.
Giorgia Meloni is a political chameleon. Charitably, one might describe her as a bridge-builder — between Italy’s national interests, European policy, and the Union’s integration with global power centers.
Her proximity to the U.S. government provided reassurance at the height of the tensions between Brussels and Washington.
Yet her zigzag approach on the Ukraine war — sometimes acting as a force for dialogue, other times siding with the war faction – raises fresh questions.
As the leader of the EU’s third-largest economy, she wields political leverage that could make her a dangerous counterweight to Brussels’ centralizers. The ostentatious transfer of Italy’s gold reserves from the national central bank to the custody of the state can be interpreted as a provocation against Brussels. Is Rome preparing for a currency crisis emergency and positioning a gold-backed currency?
Von der Leyen can consider herself fortunate that the European commentary scene pays little attention to such details — and that many journalists hang on her every word as she waxes poetic about the charms of green policy and the EU Green Deal success story.
And this is precisely where it gets interesting.
At Thursday’s EU Council meeting, alongside the escalating Iran conflict, questions about the EU carbon mechanism (ETS) were on the agenda. The exploding energy prices are not just a problem for Europe’s businesses and consumers.
From the commission’s perspective, they represent a super-disaster, exposing the catastrophic consequences of the green transformation — previously masked by media narratives, moralizing, and generous subsidies — in glaring public light.
The daily mounting pressure on the economy has made the fractures within the EU’s political fabric painfully clear. On one side stands the faction of climate policy opponents, fronted unmistakably by Italy’s prime minister.
Last week, she called for a fundamental reform — or even the abolition — of the emissions trading system, pointing out that the CO2 mechanism is economically destructive and politically unsustainable.
She now leads a growing opposition bloc, joined openly by Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Greece. It almost seems as if Rome has realized that it may be politically advantageous to confront Brussels precisely at this moment — at the provisional peak of multiple crises.