Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s hard-right European political group has claimed it has enough additional members in the European parliament to overtake French President Emmanuel Macron’s liberal Renew party as the assembly’s third-largest grouping, and claim a top EU job.

Meloni’s European Conservatives and Reformists group (ECR) has increased to 83 members following this month’s European parliamentary elections, in which parties of the radical right across the continent performed strongly.

If Macron’s Renew party does not expand in size before a July 4 deadline, it would mark only the second time in 40 years that the parliament’s three largest groups are not from the political centre, potentially disrupting a triumvirate that has chosen the EU’s most senior officials for decades.