Morawiecki succeeds Meloni and takes ECR back to its roots: attacks Brussels and constraints on freedom of expression

Brussels – Giorgia Meloni is no longer the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) party chair. Picking up her baton is former Polish premier Mateusz Morawiecki, elected today (Jan. 14) by the party’s assembly. The newly elected chairman promised that he would work after what Meloni did, “a source of inspiration for ECR.” He reiterated some stakes internalised over time by ECR: unity on support for Ukraine and no understanding with Germany’s AfD. But he immediately dusted off old hobbyhorses from the more ‘Euroskeptic’ period: the battle against the “limits to freedom of expression that are expanding in Europe” and especially against “the centralisation of power in the hands of the European Commission.”

The long-announced turnover at the top of the party also involved the vice-chairs: Morawiecki’s right arms will be the head of the Fratelli d’Italia delegation to the European Parliament, Carlo Fidanza, French MEP (and granddaughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen) Marion Maréchal and the leader of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians, George Simion. “We will work to give continuity to the successes achieved in the last four years under the leadership of Giorgia Meloni,” exulted Fidanza. Nicola Procaccini, current ECR group leader in the EU Parliament, was elected president of the party’s cultural foundation.

Meloni, with a post on X, congratulated her successor: “Valuable politician and loyal man, to him go my best wishes for a good job,” the conservative leader wrote. From the five-year Melonian forging, the once Euro-skeptical and sovereignist party emerges wholly revolutionized, tracing the metamorphosis of its leader, who, since the days when she declared she wanted to leave the euro, has surprisingly established herself as a reliable interlocutor with European institutions.

Of the old sovereignist trio Meloni-Orbán-Morawiecki, the Pole stands in the middle between the more reassuringly moderate figure of Meloni and the more markedly anti-system figure of the Magyar premier. Depending on how Morawiecki chooses to orient himself, Ecr’s new course will move closer to the centre-right of the European People’s Party or the far-right of Orbán’s Patriots for Europe.

The newly elected president’s analysis is as follows: “We are very pragmatic and aware of the different forces in the European Parliament,” he said on the sidelines of his election, “we have a privileged position: we are in the centre of this possible coalition, with the EPP to our left and the Patriots to our right. In Morawiecki’s political geography, “the EPP is now left of centre. That is the fact of the matter.” The ECR group, he assured, can cooperate with both “for the good of Europe and of the nation-states.”

Dancing with two partners, blurring the line between pro-Europeans and sovereignists. For the strategic autonomy of the EU, but against abolishing the right of veto in Common Foreign Policy. For reforming the EU, but for returning power to nation-states “against the trend toward centralisation” in the hands of the European Commission. With Elon Musk, because “we need freedom of speech and expression, including on politics,” but against the German far-right AfD, “neither friends nor partners” of ECR. Morawiecki denounced “a real attack on democracy” in Warsaw, where in his view “, 90 per cent of the media, right now, is in favour of the current liberal leftist government” led by Donald Tusk. Who, between the lines, is not exactly leftist and is one of the most influential leaders of the European People’s Party.

The European Conservatives’ trump card is on the other side of the Atlantic: Morawiecki has nominated ECR for the role of “glue of the transatlantic community”, thanks to the excellent relations not only between Trump and Meloni but especially between ECR and the stars-and-stripes Republican Party. “We are different, have our own interests, and will defend our European interest. But this has to happen in the context of the new geopolitical and geostrategic situation, which is very different from five years ago,” he said, reiterating that the EU “is stronger with the United States.”