Ursula von der Leyen’s decision to appoint Raffaele Fitto as one of six executive vice-presidents in her new European Commission signifies the first time a senior post in the EU’s governing body has been filled by a member of the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR).
Fitto, however, has little in common with many of his peers in the national Brothers of Italy – the dominant party in the ECR group and successor to the post-fascist Italian Social Movement from which the Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni hails. Instead, Fitto, a former member of the European Parliament and national minister for EU Affairs, cut his political teeth in the centre-right Christian Democratic party (DC).
This made him Meloni’s safest bet to secure a powerful Commission role in the new mandate, while also giving the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) an opportunity to build alternative majorities with factions of the far right, according to Italian and EU government officials.
When Fitto was nominated by Meloni as Italy’s commissioner-designate, he limited mentioning his current political affiliation and instead invoked his centrist roots in the written presentation sent to MEPs ahead of his parliamentary confirmation hearing in mid-November. He also used the hearing as an opportunity to pay tribute to the former Christian Democratic leader Alcide De Gasperi – a founding father of the post-war conservative movement, along with the likes of Konrad Adenauer and Robert Schuman.
Fitto also talked up his “commitment to Europe” in an effort to counter growing criticism that ECR does not support further European integration and other EU values. However, many progressives in the European Parliament were unconvinced. Bas Eickhout, the co-chair of the Greens/EFA group, criticised Fitto and Brothers of Italy ahead of the parliamentary vote for the Meloni government’s crackdown on the rights of same-sex parents and the judiciary.
“People that say ‘He is not far right…’ – tell that to the mothers in Italy whose rights to have children together have been taken away… tell that to the judges who are criticised by the government for doing their job,” he said.
When Greens MEP Ana Miranda Paz accused Fitto of being a neo-fascist during his confirmation hearing, he replied with a smile and open arms, noting that “these are topics far removed from any real hypothesis.”
But unlike Fitto, with a few notable exceptions, almost all ministers and senior party members within Brothers of Italy have post-fascist backgrounds. This would have made them difficult sells to the European Parliament, which must confirm commissioner nominees with a qualified majority.
Political journey from the centre right
Italy’s Christian Democratic party was dismantled in the early 1990s following a major cash-for-influence scandal, leaving politicians like Fitto politically homeless. DC members went left and right, joining a raft of nascent political movements. Fitto initially aligned with smaller centrist parties before joining Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right Forza Italia, for which he served as a member of the European Parliament with the EPP.
Fitto became a close ally of Berlusconi, but ultimately broke ranks with him in 2015 over Forza Italia’s decision to co-operate with the then centre-left governing party. As a consequence, he left the EPP to sit with ECR, which was then dominated by Britain’s Tory party – marking his first lurch towards the right at the European level. In 2019, he joined Brothers of Italy and helped pave the way for the party to join ECR.
As of 1 December, Fitto is responsible for regional and cohesion funds in the Commission. It’s a policy area in which he has built up expertise in both Italy and Brussels, though it is hardly one of the most coveted portfolios. While ECR politicians have held commissioner posts in previous mandates, they have only ever been mid-level roles, such as financial services and agriculture.
However, Fitto’s appointment to the vice-presidential ranks – powerful posts that oversee other commissioners and answer to Von der Leyen – can be seen as a political rapprochement between the EU’s mainstream centre right and the far right. Many in the EPP, including the Commission president herself, forcefully championed the Italian candidate like he was one of their own.
The decision ultimately cost Von der Leyen support among progressive forces in the European Parliament. When the new Commission was confirmed in a plenary vote on 27 November, it was by the slimmest majority in EU history, with many centrist and leftist MEPs citing their opposition to co-operation with ECR.
Still, most of Italy’s centre-left politicians from the country’s Democratic Party (PD), who sit with the Socialists & Democrats (S&D) group in the Parliament, gave their consent to Fitto, saying they acted “without prejudice” against him. A prominent PD figure, speaking on the condition of anonymity, tells The Parliament that Fitto has “all it takes” for the EVP role and “embodies the Christian Democratic way of doing politics, in the highest sense of institutional respect and balance.” Former progressive local administrators, now sitting in the Parliament, praised his diplomatic skills in building ties across the political spectrum.
Besides his fellow Italians, some other progressive MEPs – including half the Greens group – swallowed the Fitto pill in the interest of stability. A vote for Fitto, they argued, would allow the EU to begin its new mandate and confront mounting geopolitical challenges, including President-elect Donald Trump’s imminent return to the White House and Vladimir Putin’s ongoing war of aggression in Ukraine.
The result, progressives have lamented, has been an emboldened EPP – the dominant group in the European Parliament – that is increasingly willing to work with the far right, rather than partner exclusively with the centre-left S&D and liberal Renew Europe groups. And that’s good news for ECR co-chair Nicola Procaccini, who believes the EP now has “no majority constraints.”
Going forward, he says, parliamentary majorities will be “formed on content only and can change with each and every vote.”