Meloni and Le Pen Are Europe’s Far-Right Odd Couple

Is France’s Marine Le Pen ready to get along with Italy’s Giorgia Meloni? It seems like an odd question. Both women have led their respective hard-right parties away from their post-fascist roots and closer to the mainstream while still attacking immigrants, the “woke” left and Brussels bureaucrats. Both are set to win in their respective countries in next week’s European elections. “We agree on the main things...Taking back control,” the French opposition leader told Italian paper Corriere della Sera on Sunday. Days earlier, the Italian prime minister repeated her intent to unite Europe's right against the left.

And yet the very fact that Le Pen has extended a hand to Meloni, offering to combine their distinct voting groups into the European Parliament’s second biggest, underscores how they’ve struggled to coexist politically. Actually pulling off such a tie-up would send a very bleak signal about the European Union’s prospects with the shadow of Donald Trump’s looming return, and has added to the urgency of French President’s Emmanuel Macron’s call for European voters to “wake up” to the far-right threat and back a fresh push for closer integration.