Italy’s Meloni meets with Hungarian leader Orban ahead of key EU summit

ROME (AA) – Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni met Monday with her Hungarian counterpart Viktor Orban in Rome as part of his mini-tour that also includes Paris and Berlin as his country prepares to take over the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union in July.

The meeting also came ahead of this week's EU summit, which is set to be crucial to define the bloc's top jobs following the results of June’s European elections.

Meloni and Orban reiterated their good ties and common views on key issues such as fighting illegal immigration, declining birth rates and setting limits on shared EU sovereignty.

Meloni, however, also stressed that Orban does not share the Italian government's staunch support of Ukraine as it fights Russian forces.

“We don’t always have coincident positions on Ukraine,” she said at a joint press conference with Orban following their meeting.

But she added that the two countries both look at Ukraine’s reconstruction with deep interest, adding that Rome will organize the Ukraine Recovery Conference in 2025.

Orban's role in the negotiations over the EU top jobs following the European parliamentary elections is widely expected to be less central, in part due to his stance on Ukraine.

At the EU level, Meloni is the president of the European Conservatives and Reformists Party, which her right-wing Brothers of Italy party belongs to, while Orban's Fidesz party is not part of a European group after pulling out of the center-right European People's Party (EPP) three years ago.

Meloni, whose party consolidated its position as Italy's strongest one in the EU elections, is set to demand a top European Commission post for Italy.

Orban openly criticized the system behind the choices of EU top jobs, saying it is monopolized by the three largest European parties and tends to exclude the smaller forces.

“That was not the original EU project, which was to involve all, larger and smaller,” he said. “We cannot back these parties’ pact for the EU top jobs.”