The man who could help Meloni build bridges with Europe

BRUSSELS ― If Giorgia Meloni wants to mend fences with the EU (again), she might have found the perfect man for the job.

The Italian prime minister, fresh from her latest spat with Brussels, during which she was one of only two national leaders to refuse to support Ursula von der Leyen’s second term as European Commission chief, is likely to make her country’s pick for commissioner an EU veteran who knows where the bodies are buried.

Raffaele Fitto is a rarity in Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, which is generally filled with Euroskeptic firebrands, chest-thumping nationalists and political novices. He’s a former member of the European Parliament, said by friend and foe alike to be a pragmatist, and, having been Europe minister since October 2022, is a bit of an EU nerd.

“Mr. Fitto is the perfect bridge-builder because he's very diplomatic, and he's politically well attuned,” said Johan van Overtveldt, a Belgian MEP in the same pan-European grouping, the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR).

While each EU government gets to choose who they want to sit on the 27-strong commission for the next five years before an August 30 deadline, it's for von der Leyen to decide what job they should do. Fitto’s nomination as commissioner would signal Meloni wants to be constructive rather than a troublemaker, despite her recent clash with the EU over alleged breaches to media freedom.

Courteous and ruthless

Fitto is favorite for the job, according to people in Italy with knowledge of issue, but the prime minister still hasn't announced her choice.

Italy wants its commissioner to have a post connected to economic issues. Not only that, it wants a super-commissioner role, a vice president, overseeing several portfolios, focusing on economic and budget policy, according to officials with knowledge of proceedings. 

Fitto’s pitch is that he knows the EU budget inside out and as Europe minister has been doing in Italy what the Commission is considering replicating across the bloc: increasing government oversight of European funding of poorer regions. In Brussels, the next budget chief will have to thread the needle between the Commission’s push for greater control and resistance from regions that want to be left alone. 

People who have worked with Fitto describe him as a “democristiano” (Christian Democrat), which in Italy’s political lexicon, is a byword for middle-of-the-road politics, courteous demeanor and ruthless pragmatism.

Fitto's opponents, meanwhile, think of him as a visionless tactician who does little but follow Meloni’s orders. One Commission official, speaking anonymously to allow them to criticize a national government, said giving Fitto an economic portfolio would be like “putting a fox in charge of a henhouse,” given that Italy is the main beneficiary of the EU's post-pandemic recovery fund and has the second highest debt-GDP ratio in Europe.

Still, his political nous would stand him in good stead in a place that is steeped in compromise-building, backroom deals and in which the center-right European People’s Party (EPP) — of von der Leyen and of which Fitto himself was originally a member — holds the levers of power. 

Fitto's staff told POLITICO that he is not giving media interviews for the time being.

The great survivor

Fitto cut his teeth in Puglia, a sunlit region in the southernmost tip of the Italian peninsula which is famous for its olive trees, sandy beaches and political dynasties. 

He entered local politics in 1990, at the age of 20, when his father Salvatore, who was the regional governor of Puglia for the Christian Democrats — the centrist party that governed Italy for decades before being swept away by a corruption scandal in the early 1990s — died in a car accident. 

In the following decades, Fitto navigated the rough and tumble of Italian politics with a remarkable survival instinct and political foresight that baffled his friends and his foes. 

“I was stunned” when Fitto announced that he’d join Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy in 2018, recalled an old acquaintance. 

At the time, the tiny opposition party was tainted by lingering associations with the country’s fascist past, and seen as beyond the pale by most mainstream conservatives. 

Fitto, instead, was a rising star in the center-right Forza Italia but had fallen out with party leader and former PM Silvio Berlusconi. 

“Fitto told me: ‘I need to do this [join Meloni's party] because it’s the only way to survive politically,’” recalls his old friend: “It was clear that he had a plan.” And eventually it paid off.

Family, politics and football

When Meloni became prime minister in October 2022, she gave Fitto a powerful portfolio that included handling Italy’s almost €200 billion share of the EU's post-pandemic recovery fund and, more broadly, managing relations with Brussels. 

Even then, his appointment was a signal that Meloni — who had a history of campaigning for Euroskeptic causes — wanted to do business with the EU.

Commission officials were relieved that their interlocutor was more interested in meeting payment deadlines than fighting culture wars.

His allies describe him as a workaholic who “cares about family and politics,” and the football club Juventus — the latter being of the few affinities with Italy’s outgoing commissioner, the socialist Paolo Gentiloni.

“[Fitto] is fundamentally a politician, who got his hands dirty with the technicalities,” said a Commission official who has engaged extensively with him.

With two years to go until the pandemic recovery fund expires, Italy secured 58 percent of its share of EU funding — which is well above average — and largely stayed out of trouble with the Commission.

“He has always understood that you need to have relations with those who hold the keys to the [public] purse,” said Fitto’s long-standing acquaintance.

If Meloni’s plan comes to fruition, Fitto will hold the keys himself.