As the far right made significant gains in local elections in Germany, divisions have opened up within Italy’s political right.
The AfD (Alternative for Germany) took 43.8 per cent of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt, a historic result that has shaken the federal government in Berlin. The shockwave reached Rome, where reaction from Italy’s governing parties was sharply divided.
Sunday’s election result in Saxony-Anhalt is “a worrying signal”, said Forza Italia leader and foreign minister Antonio Tajani. “A negative signal,” he added, although there is no need to “overdramatise” it, he told Il Messaggero.
“It was widely expected — it was known that the AfD could score a clear victory. After all, most of their success comes in eastern Germany,” said the deputy prime minister. “That region is the poorest part of Germany, and extremism always takes root where there are the greatest economic difficulties.”
Transport and infrastructure minister Matteo Salvini took a very different view. “An extraordinary success, which highlights the strong demand for change, security and jobs,” the League leader said in a post on X.
“Fear? Terror? Danger? No, it’s called DEMOCRACY. Another Europe is possible,” he concluded.
Italy’s two deputy prime ministers remain split over support for the AfD who is opposed to arming Ukraine and keen to end sanctions on Moscow in return for cheaper energy supplies. Meloni herself chose not to comment directly, leaving Galeazzo Bignami, Brothers of Italy’s leader in the Chamber of Deputies, to speak on her behalf.
“This is neither a positive nor a negative assessment,” he said. “When the electorate speaks, the outcome of the vote must always be accepted, whatever it is.”
“Handing out certificates of democracy or otherwise to a force that has taken part in the democratic game and been democratically elected seems to us a prejudiced judgement,” Bignami added.
The Vannacci question and the rise of the pro-Russian right
The election result in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany’s poorest state, has made the question of how to handle the rise of former general Roberto Vannacci even more complex for Rome.
The former Folgore Brigade commander — now an MEP and leader of Futuro Nazionale — celebrated the AfD’s victory on social media. “Europe is changing,” he wrote on Facebook. “Nessun dorma.”
Vannacci’s platform overlaps closely with the AfD’s: both attack the EU, call for forced “remigration”, and push for cuts to aid for Ukraine. According to the latest YouTrend polling, his party stands at 7.9 per cent, ahead of Forza Italia (7.1 per cent) and the League (4.4 per cent) — putting Meloni’s next election at risk without his support.
Vannacci has repeatedly criticised the governing coalition’s approach to migration and aid for Kyiv, earning him the Financial Times label “Russia’s Trojan horse”. Russia remains one of the sharpest fault lines on the right: the AfD opposes aid to Ukraine, and leader Alice Weidel has proposed scrapping sanctions on Moscow and resuming Russian gas and oil imports.
The result was welcomed in the Kremlin. “The historic AfD victory humiliates the arrogance, narrow-mindedness, warmongering, ineptitude and hypocrisy of the discredited German governing coalition,” wrote Kirill Dmitriev, the Kremlin’s special envoy and head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, in a post on X.
This pro-Russian wave — echoed in Italy by Vannacci — creates headaches for Meloni, who has pledged support for Ukraine, underscored by defence minister Guido Crosetto’s appointment of former Ukrainian defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov as an adviser on military innovation.
Divisions on the right are visible in Europe
Italy’s right is split on how to treat the AfD, and the divide is sharpest on foreign policy — particularly Russia.
Forza Italia takes the toughest line. As Italy’s member of the European People’s Party (EPP), the centre-right group that dominates the European Parliament, it firmly backs NATO unity and supports a “cordon sanitaire” — a deliberate political isolation — to keep the AfD shut out of mainstream EU politics.
Meloni’s own party, Brothers of Italy, sits in a different group, the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), but takes a broadly similar view.
Salvini’s The League’s relationship with the AfD has followed a different path. The two parties were once allies in the European Parliament, first in a group called Europe of Nations and Freedom, then in its successor, Identity and Democracy. That alliance collapsed in May 2024, when the League voted to expel the AfD after its lead candidate, Maximilian Krah, made controversial remarks about the Nazi SS.
Since then, the two parties have gone their separate ways. The League now sits with the Patriots for Europe group, while the AfD leads its own bloc, Europe of Sovereign Nations although Salvini’s overtures could pave the way for closer cooperation once again.