The many critical European reactions to the Italian election were as predictable as they were inappropriate.
If a majority of 35 million citizens choose three right-wing parties in a democratic election, then the rest of the EU has to respect that first and foremost.
It was already encroaching that the President of the EU Commission threatened preventive legal proceedings against the country shortly before the election.
The fact that politicians in Germany and France, even the Prime Minister there, are now demanding that human rights or democracy be respected is alarmist.
In the heat of the moment, Söder even separated Forza Italia, with which the CSU in Strasbourg sits in a faction.
Does not correspond to the left-liberal world view
If freedom is in danger in an EU member state, then you have to act.
So far, however, there is no indication of this in the case of Italy, since the government has not even been formed.
The winner of the election ran with a moderate national program that certainly does not correspond to the left-liberal world view of many competitors in Berlin or Brussels.
But Meloni isn't calling for her to leave the EU, nor does she want to throw herself at Putin.
Her transatlantic course and her support for western Ukraine policy are not to be taken for granted, especially in Italy.
They should be welcome in NATO and the EU at this critical stage of the war.
Meloni won with issues that concern many bourgeois voters not only in Italy: limiting migration, emphasizing the traditional family and tax cuts.
In Germany, too, this was once part of the standard program of the CDU/CSU or FDP.
Today, not least in many media, it is often seen as extremist.
As a result, in more and more Western European countries, such as Sweden, parties are gaining ground that one would not actually want to entrust with these issues.