Meloni hardens migration rhetoric as far-right rival Vannacci gains ground

Giorgia Meloni has spent four years constructing a prime ministerial image that reassures Brussels, Washington and financial markets. In the space of a week she has dismantled parts of it. The trigger was not a European Council summit or a bond market move but a migrant crisis in Ceuta, the Spanish enclave on the North African coast, and a polling surge by a former general who sits to her right.

The Ceuta confrontation

Last week tens of thousands of migrants crossed from Morocco into Ceuta. Nearly 100 died in the attempt. While France and other member states reinstated temporary border checks, Meloni went further. On 9 August her government announced the suspension of the Schengen free-movement agreement with Spain. At Italian airports passengers arriving from Madrid, Barcelona and other Spanish cities are now directed to separate passport control lanes. Meloni's office has said the controls will remain at least until 15 August. Spain retaliated with its own checks on travellers from Italy.

"We will not back down one millimeter on illegal immigration," Meloni posted on X. Her allies accused the socialist government in Madrid of failing to manage migration flows. The language was deliberate. It echoed the rhetoric of her early political career in the youth wing of the Italian Social Movement, the post-fascist party that later became National Alliance and eventually merged into her Brothers of Italy party.

A rival from the same tradition

Roberto Vannacci, a retired army general elected to the European Parliament in 2024, leads National Future, a party formed late last year. His platform centres on security, a hard line on immigration and a concept he calls "remigration", a not-yet-detailed plan to encourage migrants to return to their countries of origin. In the past two months his party has risen above 7% in YouTrend's polling aggregate, overtaking the League, Meloni's nominally far-right coalition partner, and gaining on Forza Italia, the centre-right component of the government.

"Without Vannacci, the centre-right could lose the upcoming election," said Lorenzo Pregliasco of YouTrend. "These seven points matter a lot." The election is due by spring 2027 but could be called earlier. For Meloni, the arithmetic is simple: Brothers of Italy leads the polls at around 28-30%, but the coalition's majority depends on the smaller partners holding their ground. If the League collapses further and Vannacci siphons votes from the right flank, the centre-right's path to a parliamentary majority narrows.

Migration promises and delivery

Meloni's 2022 campaign promised a naval blockade off the Italian coast to stop migrant departures. That blockade never materialised. What did arrive was an agreement with Albania to open detention hubs where asylum seekers are processed outside EU territory. The first centres opened in 2024; their legal basis has been challenged in Italian courts and by the European Commission, which has questioned whether the arrangement complies with EU asylum law and the European Convention on Human Rights.

Arrivals across the central Mediterranean fell in 2024 and early 2025, partly because of Tunisian and Libyan coastguard interceptions funded by the EU and Italy. But numbers rose again in the summer of 2026. The Ceuta crisis, though it unfolded on Spain's land border, gave Meloni a visible moment to demonstrate resolve. "The reaction was purely the result of domestic political calculations," said Giorgio Gori, a Democratic Party MEP. "She is trying to secure her electorate by showing that she is loyal to the right-wing slogan and propaganda on migration and beyond."

The Ukraine fault line

Migration is not the only issue where Vannacci presses from the right. On Ukraine, both the League and National Future advocate a softer line toward Moscow, opposing military aid to Kyiv and arguing against higher defence spending. Meloni has positioned herself as a staunch supporter of Ukraine, but the figures tell a different story. Italy has contributed €3 billion in military assistance over four years, roughly €1 per citizen per month, less than the price of an espresso. Germany, France and the UK have each committed multiples of that amount.

Italy also declined to join NATO's Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL), the arms-procurement scheme established in summer 2025 after Donald Trump halted new US military aid commitments. The decision was officially framed as a procedural choice, but it aligned Italy with the League's scepticism about open-ended support for Kyiv. "Ukraine is where Meloni's real difference with Vannacci lies," said Marco Tarchi, the political scientist at the University of Florence who is regarded as the intellectual reference point for the Italian New Right. "Otherwise, the gap is artificially exaggerated in rhetoric and posturing for tactical reasons."

Alliance arithmetic

Meloni's inner circle has not ruled out a pre- or post-electoral pact with Vannacci. Nicola Procaccini, her deputy in the European Conservatives and Reformists group, set the condition in blunt terms: if Vannacci seeks "to position Italy, alongside Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, clearly, it is not possible to stand together." If instead he chooses "the West, the democracies, Western nations, Western liberal democracies, then we can certainly stand together."

The formulation leaves room for manoeuvre. Vannacci has not explicitly placed himself in the Russian-Chinese-Iranian camp, but his opposition to Ukraine aid and to NATO's eastern flank reinforcement puts him at odds with the Atlanticist mainstream. Procaccini's test, "Western liberal democracies", is a phrase Meloni herself has used to define her government's foreign policy. Whether Vannacci can satisfy it without alienating the anti-establishment voters who fuel his rise is the unresolved question.

The League's dilemma

Matteo Salvini's League, once the dominant force on the Italian right, is now polling below 9%, its lowest level since 2017. Salvini has responded by hardening his own line on migration and echoing Vannacci's scepticism on Ukraine. But the League is part of the government; Vannacci is outside it, free to attack the compromises of office. That asymmetry gives Vannacci the advantage of purity. Meloni's calculation is that she must occupy the rhetorical space Vannacci claims without breaking the coalition or the EU rules that constrain her room for action.