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Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who leads the right-wing Brothers of Italy party, will face Italian opposition leader Elly Schlein in a televised debate on May 23 ahead of the European Parliament election.
The long-awaited confrontation is set to take place on the television show “Porta a Porta” hosted by Bruno Vespa on Rai1, Italian media reported on Saturday. The candidates are expected to discuss key policy areas including employment, health and migration.
Schlein, secretary of the center-left Democratic Party, has been vocal against Meloni for her politics, including her proposal to change the Italian constitution to allow citizens to directly vote for the prime minister, which Schlein describes as a “a botched and dangerous reform.”
Meloni announced she would be running in the European elections last month, with the ambition to create a majority that “brings together the center-right forces” and to “send the left into the opposition even in the EU,” she said at a party event in Pescara, Italy.
Her party already tops recent polls in Italy, and is predicted to get 27.2 percent of the vote, ahead of the Democratic Party (20.3 percent) and the Five Stars Movement (16.8 percent).
The Brothers of Italy party is part of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, which could become part of a coalition with the European People’s Party (EPP) as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen hinted during the Maastricht debate late last month.
