The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which began in Orlando, Florida last Friday, is the first public event featuring the American Republican Party since Donald Trump’s electoral defeat. It’s a platform for the American right to discuss key issues – including debt, education, culture, and abortion – and a litmus test for its political balances.

The former president still commands a majority within the Grand Old Party, according to polls, even if that lead dropped after the events of Capitol Hill. Mr Trump himself and several Republican heavyweights reached out to their audience through the CPAC. And a delegation of Italian politicians figured among the attendees.

The conference’s importance is not lost to Rome. Most of the Italian right has been looking up to Mr Trump’s policymaking style, even emulating it at times, and his presidency strengthened the ties of American and European conservatives.

Matteo Salvini, the leader of Italy’s biggest party by polling numbers (the League), was a vocal Trump supporter. That, paired with his party’s recent affirmation of Atlanticist and Europeanist values, was the reason for the League’s delegation at the CPAC.

“The United States are the greatest democracy in the world, an irreplaceable reference point for the defense of freedom and Western values,” wrote League members Susanna Ceccardi, Silvia Sardone and Paolo Borchia from Orlando.

“It’s essential to develop and maintain a solid relationship between the two sides of the Atlantic, between Brussels and Washington, and especially between Italy and America, to tackle shared challenges together.”

Their intervention, which appeared on Formiche.net, described the CPAC as “a rich laboratory of ideas and contents, an intense and timely debate on the themes that are dear to the US conservative world, as well as a discussion on those matters that today regard us all, from fighting the pandemic to relations with internet giants, including the risks arising from Beijing’s communist regime and those for the world’s new geopolitical layout.”

The Italian conservatives remarked the striking continuity between the Trump administration and the current one, led by the Democrat Joe Biden, on issues like the promotion of local businesses or the relations with China. The perception they got was that of Washington wanting to “reaffirm their role on the geopolitical chessboard.”

However, they lamented, the near-absolute lack of Europeans onstage reflected the EU’s “marginal role deriving from its small relevance […] despite the rhetoric and the announcements policy carried out by Brussels.”

They then called for a change of pace in European-American relations, “because Europe can and must undertake a leading role in the partnership with the US. And Italy can have a prominent role, thanks to the new government where the League, too, sits in.”

Finally, the three League members reported their meetings with “many” American congresspeople, local managers and pundits, with whom they registered “an analogy of views on matters such as tax cuts, initiatives to sustain small to medium sized businesses, defense and border security.”

They also commented the US’ vaccinations progress, underscoring that fighting the virus is one of the shared issues that’s fit for collaboration, to “defeat the virus, finally turn the page and look at tomorrow’s challenges together.”