Vote for CDU-CSU, Italy's foreign minister tells Italians living in Germany

ROME (Reuters) - Italy's Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani and his centre-right party Forza Italia on Tuesday urged Italians living in Germany to support the conservative alliance in the country's snap election scheduled on Feb 23.

Germany's alliance of the Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) is leading in polls, but with a thinning margin over the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).

In an unusually direct appeal, Forza Italia, the German conservatives' main ally in Italy, said in a post on X that it "invites all Italians living in Germany to support the CDU/CSU in the parliamentary elections on February 23."

Germany is holding early election following the collapse of Chancellor Olaf Scholz's three-way coalition between social democrats, greens and liberals.

U.S. billionaire Elon Musk recently backed the AfD as he hosted its leader Alice Weidel for a discussion on his X platform, but the party's path to power is blocked by other parties' refusal to form coalitions with it.

Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who heads the nationalist Brothers of Italy party, has defended Musk's right to express his opinion but has so far not endorsed any German political party.

The other major coalition partner in Meloni's government, the anti-migrant League, has in the past expressed support for the AfD, but is no longer allied with it in the European Parliament.

(Reporting by Claudia Cristoferi and Sarah Marsh, editing by Alvise Armellini and Christina Fincher)