The positioning of the governing party ‘Fratelli d'Italia’ between the far-right and the bourgeois centre
‘Montagna Russa’ is what they call the rollercoaster in Italy. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has had a political rollercoaster ride before she soon starts her summer holiday. Between the glamour of the summit and the pitfalls of Brussels, she tried to send out signals, for example with the surprising vote of her MEPs against Ursula von der Leyen. Has the head of government overplayed her hand? Where does she want to go strategically with her right-wing conservative party, which has become the dominant force in the centre-right camp in the third-largest EU member state? Many things seem confused at this point, the gun smoke has yet to clear. We try to reconstruct the events and look to the future.