Former Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki confirmed his interest in taking over as president of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, a post currently held by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, according to Euractiv.
Morawiecki, who served as head of the Polish government until his conservative PiS (ECR) party ceded power to current Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s coalition last year. At the ECR summit in Dubrovnik, Croatia, Italian media asked Morawiecki if he had ambitions to succeed Meloni as ECR president.
I do, of course I do. Everything is in the hands of Giorgia Meloni, who is an excellent leader of the ECR. We will discuss the matter [of succession] in the near future.
Morawiecki added that he invited Meloni to Warsaw, where they had already met in December 2022, when both were prime ministers of their respective countries.
We spoke three days ago in Brussels, she gave me some hope that she might come, but we’ll see whether this will be possible.
Leadership of the ECR party would reportedly be a consolation for Morawiecki if he was not elected as his PiS party’s candidate in next year’s presidential election. His leadership over ECR “would be a good idea,” PiS MEP Bogdan Rzońca stated.
All the more so as Meloni, being the prime minister of Italy, has a great deal of work to manage in her own country, while the affairs of the European party require considerable time and attention, given that we have another European election in a few years.
ECR is currently the fourth largest group in the European Parliament, with 78 MEPs. It ceded its position as the largest national-oriented group in the new convocation to Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán’s new Patriots for Europe group.
