The last summit of the 27 before the European Championships, for Giorgia Meloni, is also the first where Mario Draghi's shadow grows thickest. La Hulpe's speech intensified the rumors that he would be at the head of Europe, at the Commission, or as Charles Michel's successor.
A hypothesis which, in the government majority, risks being explosive also for the electoral campaign that is about to begin. "I'm happy that we're talking about an Italian, but the debate on Draghi is philosophy. It's the citizens who decide," she underlined to reporters at the end of the summit. The electoral campaign of the Fdi leader, pressured by Matteo Salvini, prodded in Europe by Marine Le Pen and watched with growing attention by the rising right, can only be linked to this concept, writes Alessandro Gualtieri, an analyst at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEP) in Milan. "The League has already made its sacrifices with Draghi, and we have also paid for it," says Salvini.