The EU must be prepared to work closely with Marine Le Pen if she wins the French election, a top Brussels ally of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
Nicola Procaccini said the EU institutions and the center-right European People’s Party must be “courageous” when it comes to working with the far-right Patriots party in Brussels, the European home of Le Pen’s National Rally, if she wins April’s presidential election, just as they were after Meloni’s victory in Rome in 2022.
“There’s no way to apply the cordon sanitaire to the French Republic,” Procaccini, leader of the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists group, said in an interview in his office, referring to the informal agreement among mainstream parties to shut far-right forces out of power. He said Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, an MEP who would be likely to become prime minister under a Le Pen presidency, “are reasonable people, pragmatic people, like Meloni.”
Procaccini added that the French duo “will defend the national interest but without crazy things” such as hauling France out of the EU.
A Le Pen victory would turn Europe’s far-right surge into power at the EU leaders’ table, placing one of the largest countries under a euroskeptic force, and forcing the EPP, which largely governs Brussels, to work out how to deal with far-right governments without fracturing the bloc.
The last power shake-up in Brussels occurred when Meloni — whose Brothers of Italy party leads the ECR political family alongside Poland’s Law and Justice — came to power. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and EPP chief Manfred Weber sought to build bridges with Meloni’s government to bring Rome into the Brussels fold.
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