Europe has much to learn from Georgia Meloni

Giorgia Meloni was nearly an hour late for Monday’s European crisis summit at the Elysee Palace in Paris. According to the French press, Italy’s prime minister made her appearance ‘in the middle of the meeting, 50 minutes later than the agreed time’. Perhaps her Maserati got caught in the Paris traffic, or perhaps Meloni made her late entrance intentionally; a way of underlining to her host, Emmanuel Macron, and the other European leaders present, that she alone has a warm relationship with Donald Trump.

Meloni visited Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club for what both parties called an ‘informal meeting’ at the start of the year. The then President-elect described the Italian as a ‘fantastic woman’ and told reporters that ‘she’s really taken Europe by storm’. A fortnight later Meloni was one of the handful of world leaders invited by Trump to his inauguration in Washington.

To no one’s great surprise, Monday’s summit achieved little other than revealing the divisions that exist between European nations.