The leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal, met the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, on Wednesday evening in Rome, as he himself reported via the social network. The European conservative New Direction foundation, chaired by Nicola Procaccini, MEP from Meloni’s party, will hold a day of debate this Friday in Valencia in which former Vox deputies Iván Espinosa de los Monteros and Víctor González de Coello, who left the party due to their disagreements, will speak. with the current leadership.
Abascal’s meeting with Meloni is the second between the two (the first was in Brussels in October 2024) since, in July of that year, the Vox MEPs met with the ECR group, of which they had been part in the previous European legislature, to join the Patriots, the new formation promoted by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Abascal has insisted since then that his relations with the Italian prime minister were not affected by this unexpected change of allies, but the Vox leader was not invited back as in previous editions to Atreju, the annual youth festival of Meloni’s party Fratelli d’Italia. The latter agreed to intervene in the Vox party which, under the name of Europa Viva 25, took place last September, but did so with a recorded message in which he clearly distanced himself from Orbán’s speech, asking that Europe continue to support Ukraine against Putin and calling for an end to the Israeli bombing of Gaza and the right of the Palestinians to have “a state of their own”.
Abascal’s trip to Rome, which her party had not reported on, seeks to seal reconciliation with Meloni at a time when the European conservatives led by her have begun a rapprochement with the leaders of Vox’s former neoliberal sector. The day that is celebrated this Friday in Valencia, under the title Reclaiming Europe: Defending Sovereignty in a Multipolar Worldwas organized by the New Direction foundation and will be attended by, in addition to Nicola Procaccini, vice-president of the ECR group in the European Parliament, the MEPs Nora Junco and Diego Solier, elected on the Se Acabó la Fiesta list but who broke up with their former leader, Alvise Pérez, and the former parliamentary spokesperson of Vox and current president of the Atenea foundation, Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, as well as the former MP and founder of Vox Víctor González Coello from Portugal. Sources close to the event assure that Vox lobbied for the participation of the last two to be cancelled, without success.
Abascal made his meeting with Meloni public through a message accompanied by a photograph in which they are both smiling, holding each other by the waist and wearing casual clothes. “Last night I met an exceptional friend and ally in Rome, the Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. I was able to talk at length about the unusual and very serious situation of political corruption, aggression against institutions and degradation of public life from which we Spaniards suffer. We were also able to exchange impressions on the challenges that Europe faces due to the migratory invasion and the green tax”, he says. Only at the end does he let slip that they addressed “the role that growing patriotic and conservative forces around the world must play in the face of these complex challenges.” As it happens, Abascal formally presides over the European Patriots party, while Meloni is the most prominent leader of the ECR, even though last January she left the party presidency to former Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, of Law and Justice.
