Roberto Vannacci, the former general whose Futuro Nazionale party has surged to fourth place in Italian polling just seven months after its foundation, used the annual Cernobbio business forum on Saturday to declare that the European Union must stop pursuing political integration and start defending what he called European cultural identity. The invitation to a gathering traditionally dominated by bankers, industrialists and centrist politicians marks a striking mainstreaming of a figure who was expelled from the League last year after publishing a book that attacked feminism, homosexuality and immigration.
A general's rapid ascent
Vannacci's rise has been unusually fast even by the standards of Italy's volatile party system. A decorated paratrooper who commanded the Folgore brigade and served in NATO operations, he entered politics only after the publication of Il mondo al contrario (The World Upside Down), a self-published polemic that sold hundreds of thousands of copies and made him a hero to the anti-establishment right. The League's Matteo Salvini initially welcomed him, but the party expelled him in June 2024 after he described homosexuals as "not normal" and questioned the Italian citizenship of athletes with immigrant parents. Within weeks he had launched Futuro Nazionale, positioning it to the right of Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy.
Polling averages now place the new party between 8 and 10 percent, ahead of the League and within striking distance of the Democratic Party. That trajectory has forced Meloni into a delicate calculation: she cannot openly embrace Vannacci without alienating the centrist voters and European partners she has courted since taking office in 2022, but she cannot afford to let him siphon off her right flank either. Brothers of Italy officials privately acknowledge that Vannacci's voters are largely drawn from their own base.
The Cernobbio stage
The Ambrosetti Forum, held each September on the shores of Lake Como, has long functioned as Italy's answer to Davos, a place where the governing class tests ideas before they become policy. Past speakers have included Mario Draghi, Christine Lagarde and Ursula von der Leyen. Vannacci's presence on a panel debating EU integration alongside Mario Monti, the former prime minister and European commissioner, was a deliberate choice by the organisers to reflect the new political reality. The audience of executives and entrepreneurs listened as Vannacci argued that the EU's founding treaties had been stretched beyond recognition, turning a community of sovereign nations into a centralising superstate that erases national cultures.
Monti, who led a technocratic government during the eurozone crisis and later served as a senator for life, responded directly. "We are hearing fascist rhetoric," he said, according to the official transcript of the session. The phrase carried particular weight in a forum where Monti is regarded as the embodiment of the pro-European establishment. Vannacci dismissed the accusation as a standard tactic to silence dissent, telling the hall that "calling everyone fascist who defends identity is the last refuge of those who have no arguments".
Meloni's balancing act
For the prime minister, the Cernobbio appearance was an unwelcome reminder that her coalition's right flank is not fully under control. Meloni has spent two years reassuring Brussels and financial markets that her government respects EU fiscal rules and supports Ukraine, while simultaneously pursuing nationalist policies on migration and family law. Vannacci offers a purer, uncompromising version of that nationalism. His party demands an immediate halt to the EU's green transition regulations, a renegotiation of the Stability and Growth Pact, and a moratorium on further enlargement, positions that would put Rome on a collision course with the European Commission if adopted.
Meloni's office declined to comment on Vannacci's speech. A senior Brothers of Italy figure, speaking on condition of anonymity, described Futuro Nazionale as "a symptom of frustration that we must address with results, not by chasing them." The government's current strategy is to deliver tangible wins, lower irregular arrivals, faster permit processing for skilled workers, a revised National Recovery and Resilience Plan, in the hope of denying Vannacci oxygen. Whether that works before the 2027 general election remains the central question for the centre-right.
The French echo
Jordan Bardella, president of France's Rassemblement National, sent a recorded message to the forum that mirrored Vannacci's themes. "We want a Europe of growth and of borders," Bardella said, arguing that the EU's current trajectory combines economic stagnation with uncontrolled migration. The RN's strong showing in the June European Parliament elections, it topped the French poll with 31.5 percent, has emboldened Bardella to present his party as a government-in-waiting. His alignment with Vannacci signals a potential axis between Italy's newest hard-right force and France's most established one, though both parties sit in different European Parliament groups: RN in Patriots for Europe, Futuro Nazionale in the European Conservatives and Reformists group alongside Meloni.
The convergence is not seamless. Vannacci has criticised the RN's past sympathy for Russia, while Bardella has sought to distance his party from the neo-fascist label that dogs Vannacci. Yet both are betting that the EU's next legislative term will be defined by a backlash against the Green Deal, migration pacts and further federalism, a bet that the Cernobbio audience, traditionally pro-integration, appeared to take seriously.
Establishment anxiety
Monti's intervention reflected a broader unease among the Italian and European establishment. The former prime minister warned that the language of "identity" and "cultural defence" has historically been the prelude to the dismantling of democratic safeguards. He cited the EU's rule-of-law mechanism and the Eurobarometer surveys showing declining trust in national institutions as evidence that the answer to voter alienation is more accountable supranational governance, not less. Few in the hall disagreed openly, but the applause for Vannacci's closing remarks, a call to "reclaim the Europe of peoples", was noticeably louder than for Monti's defence of the status quo.
A familiar pattern, new intensity
Italy has a long tradition of anti-system forces breaking through at Cernobbio. Beppe Grillo addressed the forum in 2013; Salvini in 2018. Both went on to lead governments. Vannacci's difference is ideological clarity: he does not seek to manage the EU but to shrink it to a free-trade area with shared borders. That vision resonates with a segment of the Italian electorate that feels the benefits of the single market have accrued to the north while the costs of migration and regulation have fallen on the south. Whether the business leaders at Cernobbio, many of whom depend on EU structural funds and single-market access, will tolerate a politician who threatens the framework that underpins their profits is the unresolved tension the forum left hanging.
The numbers behind the noise
Beneath the rhetoric, the polling data tells a concrete story. Aggregated surveys from SWG, YouTrend and Ipsos in August placed Futuro Nazionale at 9.2 percent, the League at 8.5 percent, Forza Italia at 7.8 percent and the Democratic Party at 22.3 percent. Brothers of Italy leads at 28.7 percent but has lost 1.5 points since January. The centre-right coalition as a whole commands roughly 47 percent, enough for a parliamentary majority under the current electoral law, but the internal distribution is shifting. If Vannacci reaches 12 percent, he could demand a vice-premiership or a key ministry in any post-2027 cabinet, giving him direct leverage over EU policy.
The European Commission has so far avoided commenting on individual Italian politicians. A spokesperson reiterated that the EU engages with "democratically elected governments" and that the rule-of-law framework applies equally to all member states. That line will be tested if Futuro Nazionale enters government and proposes legislation that conflicts with EU directives on asylum, media freedom or judicial independence. The Cernobbio exchange suggests that test may come sooner than Brussels expects.
People mentioned
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Mario Monti
Organisations
Futuro Nazionale · Rassemblement National · European Union
