The election in September of the far-right Giorgia Meloni as Italian premier has sent shockwaves around Europe, not least in Brussels. Meloni has raised fears that she'll roll back reforms put in place by her predecessor, encourage a harsher climate when it comes to dealing with asylum seekers and even renegotiate the conditions of the EU's post-Covid Recovery Plan.
In this look at the EU's "levelling up" – efforts aimed at making life more equal across Europe’s many and diverse regions – we travel to Italy, where the conservative government in Rome is pushing back against Brussels on rule-of- law issues. We explore what this stance could mean for EU cohesion funds as well as for the EU's post-Covid Recovery and Resilience programme.
