It is a case of recycling which raises questions both in Brussels and in Rome. The former vice-president of the Italian Council and foreign minister, Luigi Di Maio, 36, is on track to become the special representative of the European Union (EU) to the Gulf countries, a newly created post. Josep Borrell, the EU’s chief diplomat, must decide in the next few days whether he will present his name to the twenty-seven member states. Mr. Di Maio would then have to obtain the approval of two-thirds of the countries to take up this post. ” For the momentsays the head of the European External Action Service (EEAS), no decision has been made. And any rumors are pure speculation. »
If Mr. Di Maio were to be proposed, it is not yet certain that he will obtain the vote of his own country. Representatives of two parties in the ruling right-wing coalition, the League and Forza Italia, have already shown their hostility to his appointment. Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani (Forza Italia) indicated that the name of his predecessor had not been proposed by the current government, formed on October 22, but by the previous one, led by Mario Draghi, former governor of the European Central Bank (ECB) and still very influential in Brussels.
Without a university degree, entered politics at the age of 26 when he was elected in 2013 under the banner of an anti-system and eurosceptic party, the 5-Star Movement (M5S), this young leader from Naples has regularly been the subject of trials in incompetence. In 2019, Vice-President of the Council, he had also been at the heart of the most serious diplomatic crisis between Paris and Italy since the Second World War by going to support “yellow vests” in Montargis (Loiret).
Becoming Minister of Foreign Affairs for Mr. Draghi in 2021, he underwent a spectacular political transformation, multiplying the evidence of loyalty to a chief executive representing the quintessence of an establishment that his political family had promised to drive out of power. Mr. Di Maio went so far as to cause a split in his party by lining up, with sixty deputies, behind the President of the Council to support his policy of military support for kyiv, decried by the majority of M5S parliamentarians.
“Curious Choice”
Defeated in the September legislative elections, Mario Draghi’s new ally was therefore available when the government of Giorgia Meloni was formed and when the new post of special representative, wanted by the Twenty-Seven to strengthen relations with the Gulf countries, was open.
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