The overtures presage a possible reconfiguration of nationalist parties' alliances after voters decide the next European Parliament in June 6-9 elections.
Surveys suggest the parliament's far-right groups -- currently fractured -- will win around 37 percent of seats in the next legislative term, up from 30 percent currently.
At a far-right rally in Madrid on Sunday, Le Pen declared: "We are all together in the final stretch to make June 9 a day of liberation and hope."
A day later Meloni, prime minister of Italy since October 2022, said in a television interview that she wanted to replicate the success of her post-fascist party at home and "do the same thing in Europe: ally parties that are compatible with each other in terms of vision, even with completely different nuances".
The door to that scenario opened wider Tuesday when Le Pen's National Rally (RN) said it was splitting with the Alternative for Germany (AfD).
The announcement came after the AfD's lead EU candidate Maximilian Krah -- buffeted by controversies -- told an Italian newspaper that not every member of the Nazi's feared SS was "automatically a criminal".
"The AfD crossed what I consider to be red lines," RN leader Jordan Bardella told French channel LCI. He said far-right alliances in the European Parliament would "go back to zero" after the elections.
The RN and AfD are part of the extreme-right Identity and Democracy (ID) EU parliament group.
Meloni's Brothers of Italy party, in contrast, sits with the far-right European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR).
A third hard-right force sits in the EU parliament in the form of Fidesz, the unaffiliated party of Hungary's Kremlin-friendly Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
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