About the author Francesca De Benedetti is Europe section head of the Domani newspaper. In the past she has worked for Repub­blica and La7. In 2024 she was appointed fellow at the Vienna Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (IWM) where she won the Milena Jesenská Fellowship for Journalists with a project entitled Giorgia Meloni and Vik­tor Orbán: An Asymmetric Interdependence. De Benedetti writes European politics commentaries and analysis for Vanity Fair Italia and Jacobin USA. Her articles and opin­ions have been published in a range of international news­papers such as The Independent, Balkan Insight, Die Presse and HVG. She co-founded European Focus, a European-­scale joint editorial project created by nine press outlets including Domani, Tagess­ piegel, Gazeta Wyborcza, Libéra­tion and El Confidencial. The English translation of the text was produced by ­Isabelle Johnson/FES, based on the Italian version written by the author of the paper.