‘Italian politics is wild and messy – but new coalition could be its saviour’ –
With parties of every imaginable hue, it’s a miracle any government gets formed at all
AFTER not a little drama and much hand-wringing over a constitutional crisis, Italy has a new government. But just because a government has been formed against all odds, there is no reason to believe the drama is going to end any time soon.
New Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte is on an apparent collision course with EU officials as he looks to openly flaunt EU fiscal rules. Italy currently has the highest debt to GDP ratio of any country in Europe at 130pc. This is down to decades of financial mismanagement by Italy’s shortlived coalition governments, which were happy to kick the fiscal can down the road knowing full well they wouldn’t be around to face the consequences.
The current government looks set to change that and initial noises point to a looming confrontation with the EU. How the EU responds to Italy’s demands will affect the long-term health of the European project. We know in Ireland and from watching Greece, that when it comes to fiscal matters and debt relief, EU leaders are not for turning. Angela Merkel, who has so many headaches now of her own, has already ruled out budgetary concessions to Italy, claiming “we all have to follow the same rules”.
The Italian electorate has seen no benefit from following those rules since it joined the single currency. Italian youth are among the most disaffected of all when it comes to seeing any benefit of EU membership. Most of Italy’s young people have never known any kind of economic growth. They are hopeless and see no future for themselves. The south of Italy especially suffers incredible unemployment (Calabria has an unemployment rate of 23pc) and you only need listen on the streets of Dublin to see just how many are forced to leave home to find work.
Italy will be banking on the fact that, as the eurozone’s third largest economy, Italy is too big to fail. If the EU looks to make an example of Italy and ‘punish’ it for breaching fiscal rules, it may only further anger the electorate and feed the populists’ anti-Europe rhetoric. The Italians have, for years now, suffered policies of austerity which they perceive as imposed on them by unelected European bureaucrats. Europe can point to countries like Ireland and Portugal who took their medicine, put their heads down, and worked their way back from the brink. Italy hasn’t been able to implement the required reforms to reap any benefits from austerity. Therein lies the problem.
There is already a strong feeling of resentment towards the EU because of its decision to throw Italy under the bus when it came to the immigration crisis facing Europe. The EU has no common immigration policy but it does have the Dublin III Regulation, which states that refugees must apply for asylum in the country in which they land. This affected Italy and Greece disproportionately. As Italy’s neighbours closed off their borders one by one, it left Italy with thousands of African immigrants.
This was the backdrop to The League’s success at the election in March and Matteo Salvini, The League’s leader, has wasted no time, visiting Sicily this week and stating the island must stop being the “refugee camp for Europe”. His first real action in this regard was to block the Doctors Without Bordersoperated rescue ship Aquarius from Italian ports. By asking Malta to take the 600-plus rescued migrants, Mr Salvini risked upsetting an ally. It does show he means business on immigration however, and there will no doubt be other humanitarian situations to deal with. We can only hope unilateral action on immigration happens before too many migrants lose their lives at sea.
Mr Salvini is slated in the press for being xenophobic and it is difficult to argue with that but you can’t tar all Italians with the same brush. For years now, Italy has done more than any other nation on the Mediterranean, saving thousands of lives at great burden to a struggling economy. Mr Salvini’s opportunism came about because of a perceived lack of solidarity in Europe with Italy’s immigration woes.
Mr Salvini and Luigi Di Maio may have pulled it out of the fire of a full-blown constitutional crisis to form a government that got President Sergio Matarella’s approval and the all-important vote of confidence from Italy’s parliament, but there is turbulence ahead. For those unfamiliar with Italian politics, it seems utterly chaotic, and it is. However, if you’ve followed Italian politics for any period of time, you’ll understand that chaos is how Italian politics work. This is Italy’s 66th government since the end of World War II, but when you look at the Italian political landscape and how fractured it is, with parties of every imaginable hue, you realise it’s a minor miracle that any government gets formed at all, or stays formed long enough to actually affect any meaningful legislation.
ACOALITION between protest party the Five Star movement (M5S) and rightwing populists The League campaigned on a promise of ‘radical change’ in the form of increased public spending, sweeping tax cuts and anti-immigration measures and the government looks set on delivering.
Mr Conte’s first job as prime minister was to travel to the town of La Malbaie in Quebec, Canada, for the G7 Summit. US President Donald Trump was hogging the limelight, and the looming trade war will be front of mind, so maybe not a bad stage to enter on.
As it happened, the world barely noticed Mr Conte’s debut as Mr Trump’s spat with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, early summit exit and subsequent late-night tweets ate up all the media bandwidth.
If we’re looking for reasons to be optimistic though, there is a glimmer of hope and it comes from the fact that M5S and The League were actually able to put this government together. It suggests an ability and a willingness to compromise. Both parties might have pushed for a new election once Mr Matarella vetoed their choice of Eurosceptic finance minister Paolo Savona. It would be reasonable to assume both the M5S and The League might return with a stronger mandate. However, rather than throw the country into the uncertainty of new elections, they chose to find a way.
The triangular composition of this government would make Leonardo proud. We have both Mr Di Maio and Mr Salvini occupying left- and right-hand corners, with Conte at the apex. This allows Mr Conte to do all the compromising, while Mr Di Maio and Mr Salvini can maintain the hard line that got them into power. Could it be that out of chaos they’ve managed to forge a perfect government? It’s probably wildly optimistic to think so, but if you follow Italian politics, nothing can surprise you and absolutely anything is possible. Let’s hope, for the Italian people, things can change. They’ve suffered long enough and deserve so much more from their government and from Europe.