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It is the time of the conservatives”, Ecr co-president Nicola Procaccini repeated several times on the Atreju stage. It is true: all over the world, the conservative right is on the rise, creating an unprecedented global political scenario, an unmistakable sign that citizens are choosing a credible right, close to the people, rather than the ideological drifts of an abstract left. To tell the truth, Atreju has always been there, since 1998, the year of its first edition: since then, the Italian conservative right, now united in Fratelli d’Italia, the party of Italy’s first female Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, meets every year at a fixed date that has expanded over the years to include thousands of people from all over the country and beyond. Atreju is the place for conservatives par excellence and par excellence: its name comes from the protagonist of The Neverending Story, the novel by Michael Ende, which tells the story of a child, Atreju to be precise, who is called upon to challenge “the nothing that goes on”.
The Fratelli d’Italia party, therefore, could not miss a space dedicated to the European conservatives of the Ecr, protagonists of a panel during the eight days of debates and with a stand in the Christmas village built on the lawn of the Circus Maximus in Rome. The debate dedicated to the members of the Ecr took place on Friday evening in the Marco Polo room, one of the two (the other being dedicated to Christopher Columbus) set up for the event. Moderated by Antonio Giordano, Italian MEP and Secretary General of the Ecr party, the debate featured conservative representatives from the delegations of the various EU member states, as well as some conservative representatives from countries outside the EU: Oleana Khomenko, Ukrainian MEP and Vice-President of the Group of European Conservatives and Democratic Alliance in the Council of Europe, Marion Maréchal, French MEP and head of the French delegation, Luca Ciriani, Italian Minister for Relations with the Parliament, Lord Martin Callanan, former UK Secretary of State for Energy, Ariel Bulshtein, Israeli MEP and head of the Knesset delegation to the European Parliament. Finally, Gary Parlmer, US Congressman, and Georgiana Teodorescu, Romanian MEP, spoke. In short, a moment dedicated to conservatives from all over the world, a fundamental part of the event.
We arrived at the Ecr Atreju stand and spoke to Francesco Di Giuseppe, the Ecr party’s operations manager: “To start with the data, the international delegation was 153, from 24 different countries: Albania, Iceland, Argentina, Ireland, Belgium, Israel, Bosnia, Italy, Bulgaria, Poland, Croatia, Romania, Czech Republic, San Marino, Estonia, Spain, France, Sweden, Germany, Ukraine, Honduras, United Kingdom, Hungary and the United States. Delegations that “were in Rome from Thursday to today with up to 75 young people, so half of the guests were under 35”. Ecr also organised various tours to discover the city of Rome: “On Friday morning there was a very well attended tour of the Imperial Forum,” explained Di Giuseppe. Then, at 10.30 pm, there was a panel discussion dedicated to Ecr members. After the panel, at 10.30 pm, there was a welcome cocktail at Numa al Circo, a venue just a stone’s throw from the Circus Maximus, a dive into the Roman culinary tradition. On Saturday morning, two parallel tours started: one to the Imperial Forums, the other to the Capitoline Museums and, accompanied by Federico Rocca, leader of the Fratelli d’Italia group in the Rome City Council, the tour also included the Giulio Cesare Hall, where the Christmas concert of the young people of the Academy of Music was taking place. On Saturday evening, at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, the Ecr Christmas Jazz Dinner was held with more than 300 guests, including all our MEPs. As already mentioned, the Ecr was also present at Atreju, with a stand inside the Circus Maximus: “Every day there was also an Ecr Party stand. It was one of the busiest of the whole event, with goodies specially designed for the occasion. People took part in a kind of game to win these gadgets. One of the most popular was right at the entrance: many people were seen walking around with our k-ways, caps, mugs, pens and diaries. Many important people also stopped by, such as Ignazio La Russa, President of the Italian Senate”.
Atreju was therefore not only a meeting of Italian conservatives, but also of European conservatives and conservatives from all over the world. Among the great international guests who came to Rome for the event, there was certainly Javier Milei, the Argentine president, who is marking a remarkable turning point for his country with a new defiscalisation policy against the atavistic damage of the South American socialists. The Argentinean leader stressed the need for right-wingers around the world to unite against the left’s interference: ‘The right must fight united, like a phalanx of hoplites or a Roman legion, where no one breaks formation’. And again: ‘We are better than the left in everything. The left is the cult of power, it would rather rule in hell than serve in paradise, and if it has to turn paradise into hell to maintain power, it will do so without scruple’. He ended his speech with his classic slogan: ‘Viva la libertad, carajo!
From Italy, in short, a look at the European and world right. In her closing speech, Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister and co-president of the ECR, reiterated her political closeness to the newly elected US president, the Republican Donald Trump, whom she congratulated on his election victory. The growth of European conservatives is also here, with a greater awareness and growing political weight that will allow the ECR’s leadership to engage in dialogue with the world’s major political figures. It is no coincidence that Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has affirmed that with the election of Fratelli d’Italia and Ecr member Raffaele Fitto as executive vice-president of the European Union, the ‘cordon sanitaire’ erected by the left to prevent conservatives from gaining access to certain positions has been broken. Carlo Fidanza, head of the Fratelli d’Italia delegation in the European Parliament, recalled that “we promised to shift the axis of European politics to the right, and that is what we are doing”. Mateusz Morawiecki, former President of the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Poland, also spoke: “Europe looks like hell now, but we want to turn it into paradise,” said the former Polish Prime Minister, before paraphrasing Donald Trump’s motto: “Let’s make Europe great again.