The former boss of the 5 -star movement, and former Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, is expected to represent the European Union in the Gulf. Josep Borrell must still validate this choice.
by Philippe Jacqué (Brussels, European Bureau) and Allan Kaval (Rome, correspondent)
This is a case of recycling which questions both in Brussels and Rome. The former vice-president of the Italian Council and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Luigi Di Maio, 36, is on track to become the special representative of the European Union (EU) to the Gulf countries, a newly created position. Josep Borrell, the EU chief diplomat, must decide in the coming days if he will present his name to the twenty-seven member states. Mr. Di Maio should then obtain the approval of two -thirds of the countries to access this position. “For the moment, we assure the head of the European service for external action (SEAE), no decision has been made. And any rumor is only pure speculation.”
If Mr. Di Maio was to be proposed, it is not yet certain that he obtained the voice of his own country. Representatives of two parties of the right -wing coalition, the League and Forza Italia, have already expressed their hostility to its appointment. The Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Antonio Tajani (Forza Italia), said that the name of his predecessor had not been proposed by the current government, trained on October 22, but by the previous one, led by Mario Draghi, former governor of the European Central Bank (ECB) and always very influential in Brussels.
devoid of university degree, entered politics at 26 years old by being elected in 2013 under the banner of an anti -System and Eurosceptic party, the 5 -star movement (M5S), this young official from Naples regularly made the subject of incompetence. In 2019, Vice-President of the Council, he had also been at the heart of the most serious diplomatic crisis that occurred between Paris and Italy since the Second World War by going to support “yellow vests” in Montargis (Loiret).
Having become Minister of Foreign Affairs of Mr. Draghi in 2021, he operated a spectacular political moult, multiplying the proofs of loyalty to a chief of the executive representing the quintessence of a establishment that his political family had promised to hunt power. Mr. Di Maio went so far as to provoke a split of his party by storing himself, with sixty deputies, behind the president of the council to support his policy of military support in kyiv, criticized by the majority of parliamentarians of the M5S.
“Curious choice”
Defeated in the legislative elections in September, Mario Draghi’s new ally was therefore available at the time when the government of Giorgia Meloni was formed and where the new position of special representative, wanted by twenty-seven to strengthen relations with countries of the Gulf, was open.
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