Italy votes Giorgia Meloni makes personal remarks

Italians will go to the polls on Saturday afternoon, the third day of four days of European elections, in which people from 27 countries will choose the next members of the European Union parliament.

Prime Minister Giorgio Meloni hopes the result will strengthen her grip on Italian politics. She even urged voters to “just write Georgia” on their ballots.

Most EU countries will vote on Sunday, following weeks of turmoil that saw two European leaders and several other politicians come under physical attack.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen on Friday evening Attacked on the streets of Copenhagentwo days before the Danes vote.

Leaders across Europe were alarmed by the latest attack, which comes as elections involving 373 million European voters are underway.

Last month Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico Survived an assassination attempt He was only recently allowed to leave the hospital. Several German politicians were also targeted.

These elections should not have an impact on national politics, but the reality is very different, especially in Italy.

Ms Meloni, leader of the far-right Brotherhood of Italy (FdI), was appointed prime minister in 2022 and took the rare step of putting her name at the top of the party’s ballot despite having no intention of running election.

Giorgia Meloni’s poll numbers have remained steady since becoming prime minister in 2022, buoyed by a divided centrist and left-wing opposition and her junior coalition partner Matteo Salvini once The party’s voters have been buoyed by the decline of the powerful populist League party, which has been pulled by foreign direct investment.

In an effort to reverse that trend, Mr Salvini has been pushing his party’s rhetoric further to the right.

The coalition’s election posters – denouncing EU-backed initiatives ranging from electric cars to tether caps on plastic bottles – attracted some ridicule but also considerable attention.

Mr Salvini’s leading candidate, Roberto Vannacci, had the same effect. The Army general was fired after self-publishing a book expressing homophobic and racist views. He has doubled down on them since becoming a candidate for the league.

Roberto Vannacci’s message is amplified by the media almost every day. That could translate into votes for the League, but if not, then Mr Salvini could be in trouble and his leadership come into question.

The same scrutiny will apply to the results of the left-wing Democratic Party (PD), whose leader Elly Schlein hopes to reach the 19% of votes she won in the 2019 election if she wants to stay in office.

Further left, all eyes will be on Ilaria Salis, a self-proclaimed anti-fascist activist who has been detained in Hungary since 2023 on charges of participating in Beaten three far-right militants and belonged to a criminal group. She is now running on a Left/Green Party platform.

Italians have until Sunday night to vote, while elections elsewhere in Europe have already concluded.

The Netherlands voted on Thursday, Dutch exit polls show tight race The left-wing Greens coalition has a narrow lead over the Freedom Party, led by anti-Islam populist Geert Wilders. Turnout is expected to be 47%, the highest since 1989, refuting any suggestion that voters are tired of politics.

Irish and Czech voters head to the polls on Friday.

Slovakia, Latvia and Malta also voted on Saturday, while the Czech Republic voted the next day.

Several Czech parties from different political groups in the European Parliament have formed a joint candidate list as a “cordon” against the populists of the ANO party led by former Prime Minister Andrej Babis.

Germany is one of the EU countries voting on Sunday, with new polls showing the centre-right CDU/CSU could overtake Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats.

His party is competing for second place with coalition partners the Greens and the far-right opposition Alternative for Germany (AfD). The Alternative for Germany has recently been embroiled in a series of scandals over accusations of foreign interference, espionage and Nazism.

In France, which has the largest number of MEPs after Germany, President Emmanuel Macron’s Ennahda party is also vying for second place with the resurgent Socialist Party under top candidate Raphael Glucksmann.

Both parties trail Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN), which consistently polls above 30%.

In a television interview on the penultimate day of the campaign, Macron called for high turnout and warned that “Europe has never been under such a strong threat.”

Other leaders have struck a similarly urgent tone ahead of the EU vote.

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico is recovering from surgery at home following an assassination attempt last month. Back on the political stage this week with a timely attack on Slovakia’s liberal oppositionHe said “anti-government media” and foreign-funded NGOs created a climate of hatred and intolerance that made the shootings possible.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has been the strongest opponent of the EU’s support for Ukraine, warned that Europe had reached a point of no return in preventing the conflict from spreading beyond Ukraine’s borders and lashed out at his Talking about the EU’s “war psychosis”.

The last voting in Italy will close at 23:00 (21:00 GMT) on Sunday.

A forecast combining preliminary provisional results from some EU member states with estimates from others will be published soon.