(CN) - Far-right Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is getting slammed by her opponents for sending her foreign minister to Washington to attend U.S. President Donald Trump's inaugural meeting of his newly created Board of Peace on Thursday.

Italy will be the only major European or G7 nation present at the Washington meeting, though the European Commission is sending a representative too, a decision that drew condemnation from left-leaning forces in the European Union. The commission, the EU's executive branch, is led by President Ursula von der Leyen, a conservative.

Italian opposition parties condemned Meloni for kowtowing to Trump and degrading Italy's reputation by backing the Board of Peace, which critics warn is a ploy to set up an alternative system to the United Nations that favors autocratic leaders and gives Trump veto powers.

Last November, Trump initially said the board was needed to end the Israel-Hamas war and reconstruct the Gaza Strip, but since then the board's aim has expanded to "secure enduring peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict," not just in Gaza.

Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani and Dubravka uica, a conservative Croatian politician serving as the European Commission's lead on Mediterranean affairs, planned to attend the Board of Peace meeting as "observers." Italy and the commission cited legal hurdles to formally joining the board.

So far, a very questionable group of leaders, many of them authoritarian allies of Trump, have agreed to join the board. Under the board's charter, membership is free for the first three years, but after that countries must pay $1 billion to become permanent members.

Those agreeing to join the board include Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who's been in power since 1994, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoan, Argentinian President Javier Milei, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Several Middle Eastern nations, including Saudi Arabia, are on the board too, though Palestinians are not represented.

Inside the EU, only far-right Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a close ally of Trump's, has joined the board as a member with most other EU members declining or not getting invited to participate. However, Cyprus, Greece, Romania and Slovakia plan to attend as observers and Bulgaria has taken steps to join.

During a debate in Italy's Parliament Wednesday, Tajani faced a storm of criticism after Meloni's Saturday announcement that Italy would participate. Previously, she had declined an offer. 

"There is only one truth here," said Elly Schlein, the leader of the center-left Democratic Party, the main opposition group. "Giorgia Meloni can't say no to Donald Trump."

Schlein said Meloni's subordination to Trump meant Italy was participating "in the dismantling of international law" and "replacing it with the law of the richest and the strongest."

Tajani, the leader of the center-right Forza Italia party inside Meloni's ruling coalition who'd previously opposed joining the board, cast Italy's presence as being in the country's geopolitical interests and in the interest of ending the conflict in Gaza.

"There are no concrete, viable alternatives to this plan," he told Parliament about how to reconstruct Gaza.

He said Italy should not be absent "at a table where peace, security and stability in the Mediterranean are discussed."

"Italy, with its history, its geographical location, the leading political role it plays in the region, cannot and must not remain on the sidelines of this process," he said.

Last November, the U.N. Security Council formally backed Trump's Board of Peace initiative, thereby giving it international legitimacy until at least the end of 2027.

On Sunday, Trump said Board of Peace members had pledged $5 billion toward rebuilding Gaza and committed thousands of personnel to international stabilization and police forces for the enclave. Those pledges were expected to be formally announced Thursday.

Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.

Source: Courthouse News Service