Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister, has marked her party’s success at the European elections with a nod to Britain’s wartime leader Winston Churchill.
The Brothers of Italy leader posted an image of herself holding up a V for victory sign on social media – a gesture most associated with Mr Churchill.
The Brothers, a party characterised by its critics as far-Right, won 29 percent of the vote – up from 26 percent when Rome-born Meloni stormed to power in 2022.
In a message on X, the 47-year-old leader wrote: “Thank you! Brothers of Italy has maintained its place as the top Italian party, surpassing the results of the general election”.
The Brothers were well clear of its nearest electoral rival in the Brussels poll, beating the centre-Left Democratic Party into second place with 24.5 percent.
Meloni’s party, with historic links to the fascist Italian Social Movement, is one of many hard-Right parties that performed well in the European elections.
Most notably, National Rally, fronted by Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, stormed to victory with more than double the vote share of its nearest rival. The result prompted French president Emmanuel Macron to call a snap election.
In Austria, the Freedom Party, another hard-Right outfit, became the largest party with 25.4 percent of the vote in the EU ballot.
Germany followed suit, with Alternative for Deutschland coming in second, despite a litany of scandals that rocked the party’s leadership.
In Belgium, despite not getting the domestic electoral result it was after, Vlaams Beland narrowly won the European elections – keeping with the rightward trend across the continent.
