ROME — Roadblocks by truckers in southern Italy are exposing the limits of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s hardline approach toward protests, as she concedes she will have to take a carrot-and-stick approach to demonstrators struggling with soaring fuel costs.

The demonstrations across the south are fast spiraling into a full-blown economic crisis. Truck drivers and farmers protesting soaring diesel bills have blocked highways, ports and distribution centers this week, leaving supermarket shelves empty and petrol pumps dry. Airports in the south are also suffering from fuel shortages.

After a cabinet meeting on Thursday, the right-wing Meloni vowed to use a security decree to clear the roadblocks, but also pledged to give financial relief to farmers and fishermen crippled by the price of diesel.

Regarding the decree, she said her government would not be “blackmailed by those who use violence as an instrument of pressure.” But she cushioned that blow by acknowledging that financial relief measures were needed to offer “immediate responses, especially to workers, to people who are in difficulty, to families.”

With elections expected in spring next year, the truckers’ protests threaten to shift the political debate from immigration and crime to whether Italians can afford to keep their businesses running. 

Gaetano Amato, a lawmaker from Naples for the populist left 5Star Movement, accused the government of offering security measures instead of answers to the economic grievances driving the protests.

“The government has done nothing and is continuing to do nothing, because it is basing everything on security decrees,” he told POLITICO. 

Stefano Orlacchio, president of the opposition center-left Democratic Party’s youth wing in the southern region of Campania, also slammed the government’s response as “an anti-southern attitude.”

“The protests in the south aren’t being taken into consideration at all,” he told POLITICO.

Diesel squeeze

At the heart of the revolt is a squeeze that truckers say they can no longer absorb. Diesel prices in Italy have risen by about a third since the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran began, and the cost of a long haul journey like Naples to Milan has climbed with them. 

Pasquale, a truck driver with a Campania-based company, who asked POLITICO to withhold his surname for fear of retaliation, said a trip’s profit had now shrunk sharply once fuel, tolls and wages were covered, and that the extra cost was working its way down the supply chain to supermarket shelves. 

Far-right Transport Minister Matteo Salvini of the League party, who posed in a truck cab a few months ago, should “come spend a week with me and we’ll see how comfortable it is,” Pasquale quipped.

While a cap on fuel prices exists on paper, he added petrol stations had ignored it “in these days of chaos.”

Beyond fuel prices, Pasquale zeroed in on EU environmental rules that Italian businesses struggle to comply with, even as cheaper foreign produce continues to reach supermarket shelves. “How can you face something like that?” he asked.

The Brussels-based International Road Transport Union has also appealed directly to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen for help. 

In a letter sent on Thursday and seen by POLITICO, the group and its national member associations said they did not support the blockades but warned that soaring diesel prices were pushing operators to the brink, calling for extended EU state aid and tougher rules on late payments from customers.

The blockades hit hundreds of supermarkets and dozens of distribution centers, according to retailers’ association Federdistribuzione. Fresh fruit, meat and fish ran out within days, followed by other food products, leaving some shops completely empty.

Carlo Alberto Buttarelli, the association’s president, put the damage at “tens of millions of euros,” with fresh food spoiling in trucks and warehouses. Supplies were beginning to resume in Sicily and Calabria on Thursday, but disruption remained in Campania. 

No room to maneuver

Meloni has limited resources to offer relief. Italy remains subject to EU deficit proceedings, constraining Rome’s room for additional spending, while the international instability driving fuel prices higher lies largely beyond her control.

Amato dismissed the announced support from the cabinet meeting on Thursday as money that had already been promised.

While the government’s reaction to last weekend’s northern protests, which were hijacked by masked gangs that looted shops and set fires, was to link the unrest to immigration and deploy troops, the southern unrest is harder for Meloni to handle because it demands concrete economic relief, said Marco Valbruzzi, a researcher at the University of Naples Federico II.

Frustrated voters could turn to the 5Star Movement, which has previously channeled economic discontent in the south, or abstain from voting altogether. 

The protests could also weaken the appeal of early elections expected in April or May next year. A winter of sustained protests would give Meloni a reason to wait until autumn 2027, hoping for an ease in international instability and improved fiscal flexibility. 

If economic grievances dominate the campaign, “she is playing an electoral game on a field that she cannot control,” Valbruzzi said.

he world is starting to understand that there is no way to fully and lastingly protect itself from President Donald Trump.

The man just can’t let things go — and he’ll get creative to get what he wants.

The latest blowup over Ukraine is emblematic of Trump’s wily persistence, and it suggests a challenging two years lie ahead for the international set even if Democrats gain some power in the midterm elections.

Not that long ago, Trump seemed to have patched up ties with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as Kyiv made gains against Russia. Trump signed legislation last month that was championed by his late friend, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), to impose heavy new sanctions and tariffs to punish Russia for its war on Ukraine.

This month, the original Trump — the one who fawns over Russian leader Vladimir Putin and despises Zelenskyy — roared back. He waived many of the legislation’s penalties on Russia, moved to buy Russian diesel and signaled he’s more interested in doing business with Moscow than seeking justice for Kyiv. Ukrainians suspect the U.S. has pressured them by throttling its satellite connections and intelligence-sharing. (The Trump administration disputes much of this.)

“Russia, frankly, has been fine on Ukraine,” Trump said Monday as he welcomed the idea of an arms control summit with Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping that might include talks about Ukraine.

The lesson, foreign officials and others steeped in diplomacy tell me, is that you cannot truly change Trump’s mind or stop his overall trajectory. Even if Trump seems briefly chastened or stages a tactical retreat, he will eventually return in new, often-surprising modes to push his original views and goals. He will try to exhaust you into submission.

Imagine how startling it is to be Ukrainian these days as Trump pressures you to make concessions to Russia by blaming you for a global energy crisis he caused by launching a war on Iran. Or what it’s like for officials across European capitals trying to craft a response, knowing there’s never an end to the process.

“There is no immunity to Donald Trump. He makes a deal in order to make a better deal the next day,” one senior European official mused, having been granted anonymity because the topic involves sensitive diplomacy.

It’s hard to blame world leaders who think they’ve learned to manage Trump only to be bewildered by a sudden left hook on his part. Foreign policy is often driven by hope when you lack good options. And Trumpology is a confounding, but still a relatively new, subfield.

Besides, Trump’s messaging is inconsistent, incoherent and nonstrategic — characteristics that can obscure his single-minded pursuit of his goals. So the global actors dealing with him — whether it’s the Gulf Arab states who shower him with gifts or the Canadians furious over his trade and territorial threats — sometimes think they’ve come to terms with him only to find they’re fighting on a newly configured plane.

A Supreme Court ruling that gutted many of Trump’s tariffs earlier this year was good news in many capitals. But since then, the so-called Tariff Man has moved to impose the import taxes under pretexts not considered by the court, including turning to accusations involving forced labor.

The White House doesn’t dispute Trump’s aggressive tactics.

“There is no greater fighter for America First interests than President Trump — and he is willing to look anyone in the eye to deliver wins on behalf of the United States,” spokesperson Anna Kelly told me in a statement.

The Greenland saga shows the limits of trying to mollify Trump.

In his first term, Trump wanted to buy the frozen island. The idea was shelved amid global laughter, but authorities in Greenland and Denmark made it clear to Trump that they welcomed more U.S. investment in the Danish territory.

In his second term, Trump huffed and puffed about an all-out U.S. takeover of Greenland, only to agree in September to an expanded U.S. military footprint that he could have gotten anyway under existing, decades-old diplomatic accords without all the drama. The whole affair has led to lingering anger in Europe about what Canada’s leader called a “rupture” in the global order — but many European officials hoped that the saga had faded away.

Yet, it’s far from certain that Trump has given up on possessing Greenland. Just days ago, he touted on social media plans to start oil, gas and mineral exploration in “our new and beautiful Greenland.”

The use of “our” is more than a little suggestive.

Defying Trump, too, can get you only so far.

Brazilians effectively told Trump to take a hike when he used tariffs and sanctions to punish the country for charging its former president, Jair Bolsonaro, in a coup attempt.

A few months later, as Bolsonaro was about to start his prison sentence, Trump seemed to admit defeat in his effort to help his political ally. “That’s too bad,” he said in November 2025, with little emotion. (“Brazil Defied Trump and Won,” The New York Times declared.)

But Trump wasn’t done with Brazil. He and his team have pursued efforts to undercut the current Brazilian government while quietly backing Bolsonaro’s son, Flávio, in his efforts to win the presidency this year. The runoff election is on Sunday, and it’s tight.

World leaders are doing what they can to make their countries Trump-resistant, if not all-out Trump-proof.

That has meant everything from diversifying their sources of trade and security alliances to joining Trump on ventures that, on the surface at least, can be helpful to them. (Then there are the many countries, especially in Africa, that diplomats privately tell me are happy to be off Trump’s radar.)

My takeaway from watching all of this, though, is that it’s not enough to stay one step ahead of Trump. You have to stay several steps ahead, and you have to be wildly imaginative about the lengths to which Trump and his devoted aides are willing to go to complicate your life.

The second Trump administration is filled with people who have turned to unique, bizarre and clever interpretations of law and reality to push his agenda. It’s not always clear who is behind which move, but it’s hard to imagine Trump isn’t fine with most of what’s happening.

It’s why a teenager is being held in immigration detention for the actions of his grandmother decades ago. It’s why Congress can scream and shout about its spending orders yet Trump ignores it.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said other nations should not hope that the Republican Party will shed Trump’s worldview, including his disdain for allies, once Trump’s out of power.

“I would love for our allies to know that we have consistent common adversaries that we’re going to work together to fight. I just don’t know that you can make that guarantee,” Murphy, a frequent Trump critic, told me. “That’s painful to say, but given the state of the Republican Party right now, it’s true.”

I understand why Ukraine and the European Union are trying to diversify their sources of intelligence and military industrial bases as Trump keeps chasing love from Russia.

Despite Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s claims, the reality is that the United States can no longer be trusted for such security assistance.

But it’s not enough to find new intelligence partners or weapons manufacturers. You have to ask bigger questions, like, “What are the untapped streams of intelligence that no one knows are out there? What’s a potential weapon no one has considered? How can I acquire what I need before Trump stops me?”

Governments need to have plans — now — for scenarios that seem completely crazy. Better to be wrong than unprepared.

Still, even if you do all of that … “I don’t think it’s possible to stay two or three steps ahead of Trump,” said Charles Kupchan, a former senior national security official during the Obama administration who apparently enjoys raining on parades.

“He acts on impulse,” argued Kupchan, who has a new book out on the crumbling world order. “We need to try to limit the damage he’s causing and ride him out.”

A Democratic win in November’s midterms — one or both chambers of Congress — is unlikely to do much to rein in Trump’s actions abroad during his final years, current and former U.S. and foreign officials tell me.

He still has the veto and has been willing to ignore congressional demands. There’s also the fact that presidents have significantly more power to act in unilateral ways overseas than they do domestically.

Ukraine, the European Union, the world — all will be dealing with a politically wounded Trump who’s likely to double down on what he feels he must have.

“He’s going to be angrier,” Murphy predicted.

The Ceuta migration crisis put human rights at the bloc’s external borders to the test, the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights warned in a report Thursday.

The Vienna-based agency warned that there are serious risks to fundamental rights at the bloc’s external borders and the sudden arrival of thousands of migrants to the Spanish exclave of Ceuta in July “put the balance between protecting fundamental rights and safeguarding the EU’s external borders to the test.”  

In late July, more than 70,000 migrants crossed from Morocco into Ceuta in the space of 48 hours, leading to questions about how the EU should deal with sudden mass movements that may be engineered or used against the bloc. In her State of the Union address, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen promised a European emergency response framework, which she said should allow for “time-limited and strictly defined flexibility in standard procedures.”

Greece has called for a measure suspending asylum applications in emergency situations — something that could amount to pushbacks, which are banned under international law. Several countries have thrown their support behind the idea, while others question whether this type of measure should be taken at the level of the EU, rather than in national capitals.

In its report, the agency said any emergency measure should comply with EU and international law, both of which guarantee the right to seek asylum and the principle of non-refoulement — a “cornerstone of refugee protection,” it added.

At a meeting of EU leaders last week, von der Leyen said the Commission would come up with a proposal for the emergency framework before the end of the year. 

“We will always uphold our values and fundamental rights, but we will never compromise on protecting our borders,” she said.

The agency’s report also highlighted other fundamental rights concerns at the EU’s external borders, including the implementation of rights monitoring mechanisms as part of migration reforms, restrictions on search and rescue organizations, and investigations into rights violations at the borders.

According to the agency’s numbers, 12 EU countries opened 322 preliminary criminal investigations between 2020 and 2025, but only nine of those resulted in a conviction.

Gaps in those investigations “lead to a perception of impunity, which risks undermining the rule of law, one of the fundamental values on which the Union is founded,” the report stated.

ROME — Former paratrooper General Roberto Vannacci portrays himself on social media as a Roman legionary and charioteer. He has declared he prefers women “without skirts” and posted an AI-generated image of a female junior minister with exaggerated cleavage.

None of these projections of masculinity and anti-woke culture are clumsy gaffes. The insurgent far-right star of Italian politics is making a deliberate play to the so-called manosphere to transform himself from an internet provocateur into a heavyweight political force.

For Italy’s first female prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, Vannacci now poses a serious problem as she needs to decide whether he is an asset or a liability. With elections expected next spring, his National Future party is polling at about 8%, making him a potentially crucial factor in building a right-wing coalition.

“It is disgusting to think you can manipulate the image of a woman for such deplorable propaganda,” the center-right junior minister in Meloni’s coalition whose image was manipulated, Matilde Siracusano, told POLITICO.  “I don’t think we have ever sunk this low, especially from someone aspiring to be a national political leader.”

Vannacci’s provocations may look like familiar trolling from a politician who has built his reputation on saying the unsayable. But behind them lies a broader political project, tapping into the grievances of young men who feel alienated by feminism and progressive culture.

Emanuele Pozzolo, a National Future parliamentarian who defected from Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, believes young men have become increasingly constrained in their relationships with women.

“I think young Western men are very often almost castrated in their instinct for dealing with women,” he said, arguing that even legitimate romantic approaches risk being treated as aggression. 

“The cultural problem is that sometimes everything seems to be harassment, everything abuse, everything violence,” he added, while stressing that genuine abuse must be punished.

Mediterranean patriarchy

Vannacci combines inflammatory online messaging and an alpha-male persona with a political program that promises to restore traditional roles for men and women. National Future even has a name for its preferred social order: “Mediterranean patriarchy.”

Its political program calls for the formation of “strong men” capable of controlling their emotions and passions, protecting women and sacrificing themselves for society. It opposes the recently introduced crime of femicide, condemns feminism, and declares the defense of life “from conception to natural death” and the “natural family” among its non-negotiable values.

The architect of this vision and principal author of the program is Lorenzo Gasperini, a conservative Catholic philosophy teacher from Tuscany, who has opposed vaccines and abortion rights on social media and blamed feminism for violence against women.

The result is a political offering that combines different traditions: conservative Catholic ideas about family and sexuality, older Italian ideas of virility and the much newer online politics of male grievance.

The manifesto seeks to put traditional family values into practice with proposals to pay parents who leave work to raise children, and reward parents of large families with tax exemption and public sector jobs.  

Some proposals echo Benito Mussolini’s fascist-era “Battle for Births,” which offered similar incentives while promoting motherhood as a patriotic duty.

Luca Sforzini, a former Vannacci ideologue who has since broken with him, said the Mediterranean label was a clever piece of marketing.

“It’s like talking about the Mediterranean diet,” he told POLITICO. “You think of Italian food, mozzarella, tomatoes, olive oil.” The result, he said, was to conceal a patriarchal model with men above women behind “bucolic, positive images. It’s monstrous,” he said.

Pozzolo rejected the suggestion that the program advocates for male supremacy.

“It is exactly the opposite,” he said. “When we talk about Mediterranean patriarchy, the main idea is to recover, preserve and pass on the responsibilities of being a man within the family and society.” Men, he argued, had a duty to show women respect, love and protection, while rejecting violence or coercive control.

He defended the “without skirts” remark as “extremely funny” — picking up on a reference to Deputy Prime Minister Antonio Tajani advocating long skirts — and not remotely offensive, comparing Vannacci’s ability to connect with ordinary Italians to Silvio Berlusconi’s. 

At a recent rally in the Umbrian city of Orvieto, Vannacci defended the Mediterranean patriarchy concept as not “oppression and possession” but “duty, fidelity, sacrifice,” and said it was the family model that had allowed “us to prevail over the last 2,000 years.”

Elisa Ercoli, president of the women’s rights organization Differenza Donna, condemned the program as “a return to the supremacy of the white, cisgender alpha male, and the woman as his handmaiden.”

Appealing to alphas

Vannacci, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, became a media sensation in 2023 with the self-published book “The World Upside Down,” a broadside against immigration, feminism and homosexuality. In it, he told gay people: “You are not normal, get over it.”

Lionized by fans as a defender of common sense against progressive politics, he received more than half a million votes as a candidate for the anti-immigration League in the 2024 European elections, before founding National Future in February.

Polling analysis suggests that about 62% of National Future’s prospective voters are male, including strong support among manual workers and the unemployed.

Pozzolo denied National Future was deliberately targeting male voters, insisting the party’s ambition was to reach Italians of all backgrounds who felt unrepresented.

Federica Formato, a lecturer at Brighton University in the U.K., who studies gender and the far right, said Vannacci was “testing the waters” to see whether he can reach a younger male audience, tapping into what she described as the “aggrieved entitlement” of young men.

A career soldier, he has repeatedly portrayed himself through images of physical strength, competition and military prowess. On social media, AI-generated versions proliferate of Vannacci as an ancient Roman in scenes recalling the Ridley Scott epic Gladiator.

For Formato, the Roman imagery projects “virility and hyper-masculinity,” while Vannacci’s army background itself helps construct the image of an “alpha male.”

Humor, memes and deliberate provocation are particularly effective with a younger online audience, Formato said, allowing relatively complex ideological messages to be reduced to instantly comprehensible images. “He is not naive,” she said. “He says things to provoke and get more attention.”

That presents Meloni with a headache. Vannacci’s party is drawing voters from her Brothers of Italy and Matteo Salvini’s League, while offering a more uncompromising platform on immigration, social issues and foreign policy.

Yet Vannacci has opened the door to an alliance with Meloni if she needs his votes. He has described National Future as a natural partner for the center-right, while insisting that any deal must respect his party’s principles. With Italy’s new electoral law offering a parliamentary majority bonus to coalitions winning at least 42 percent of the vote, those votes could matter.

That presents Meloni with an uncomfortable choice: Keep Vannacci outside the coalition, or bring into her government a movement whose appeal rests partly on the grievances of men who believe feminism has gone too far.

For Formato, Vannacci is exploiting a space in Italian politics that has so far lacked a figure capable of turning those grievances into an organized political constituency.

Vannacci, with his promises to restore traditional masculinity, appears determined to occupy it.

“There is an empty chair,” she said.