Emmanuel Macron and Giorgia Meloni are no strangers to having a spat. The first was last autumn, about migrants; this time they have fallen out over Ukraine.
The Italian prime minister made no secret of her irritation with the French president last week on discovering he had invited Volodymyr Zelensky to Paris. It was, declared Meloni, ‘inappropriate’ for Macron to host the Ukraine president for dinner last Wednesday at the Elysee. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz received an invite too, which evidently antagonised Meloni even more.
‘There were two European leaders, there were 25 missing,’ reflected the Italian PM. ‘When it comes to Ukraine, what interests us above everything else is to give a message of unity.’ Macron later justified the intimate dinner – held the day before Zelensky addressed an EU summit in Brussels – saying France and Germany had a ‘particular role’ in the Ukraine, on account of their role in brokering the Minsk agreements in 2014.
Macron’s belittlement of Meloni is both incomprehensible and unwise
Macron, though, hasn’t always been quite so matter-of-fact about EU nations acting of their own accord.
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