European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is visiting Rome to meet with Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini and Forza Italia leader Antonio Tajani as the electoral campaign for the June European elections remains in full swing. 

On Monday, von der Leyen also addressed the questions arising over the possibility of entering into a coalition with the European Conservatives and Reformists Party (ECR Party), stating that she is willing to “work with all those who are clearly committed to the rule of law,” news agency ANSA reported.

Italian PM and right-wing Brothers of Italy leader Giorgia Meloni is the conservative soft-eurosceptic ECR Party’s co-president. In turn, von der Leyen’s EPP Party’s partner in Italy is Forza Italia, a centre-right populist mainstay founded by the late Silvio Berlusconi.

Last month, during a Brothers of Italy rally in Pescara, Meloni commented on her ambitions to extend what her party has achieved in Italy to the rest of Europe.

“We want to do in Europe what we did in Italy … create a majority that brings together the centre-right forces and send the left into opposition,” Meloni said.

On Sunday night, von der Leyen appeared on the Italian TV show “Che Tempo Che Fa”, where she spoke about the need to defend Ukraine against Russia’s aggression to preserve peace in Europe.

Euronews correspondent in Rome Giorgia Orlandi reports on von der Leyen’s trip to Italy.

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