Brussels – Elisabetta Gualmini, MEP since 2019 among the ranks of the Socialists and Democrats, has left the Democratic Party to join Azione. “It’s a bit like coming home,” Gualmini herself announced at a press conference with Carlo Calenda, with whom she had shared the “Siamo Europei” manifesto during the 2019 European elections. The change of allegiance in her home country paves the way for the Modena-born reformist to join the family of European liberals and the Renew Europe group in the European Parliament.
The move to the liberal ranks in Brussels—there is not a single Italian among the 75 MEPs of Renew—is not yet official, but Gualmini has clear ideas: “I am joining Renew Europe,” she said at a press conference in the Senate. “I want to work in Europe, I am strongly pro-European, that group is the most pro-European of all, progressive and pro-European, and I want to build a space there where I can represent my ideas,” she added.
According to Gualmini, “the PD has changed its structure,” there has been “a genetic mutation, leading to a repositioning within the radical left that cuts out the culture of reformism that I have always championed.” This explains her decision, which had been in the air for days, to leave the Dem party, where “Elly Schlein has done a masterstroke and taken over the whole party” and where “the political space for those with a more moderate and governing vision, with a strong focus on foreign policy, has been greatly reduced.”
With her departure, the Democratic Party delegation in Brussels is no longer the largest in the S&D group: there are now 20 PD MEPs, the same number as the Spanish socialist group. In March 2025, Gualmini suspended herself from the S&D group after a request to waive her parliamentary immunity in connection with the Qatargate investigation. However, in December, the chamber decided to uphold her immunity. In the last parliamentary term, Gualmini played a leading role, as rapporteur for the European Parliament, in a three-year arduous battle for the approval of the directive on the rights of digital platform workers.
English version by the Translation Service of Withub
