ITALY EU gasps as vote shows surge of populist power
BRUSSELS — Since the European Union’s founding treaty was signed in Rome more than 60 years ago, Italy has been an unabashed booster of increased unity and common purpose. That may have come to an end.
Euroskeptics and populists rode a wave of hostility toward all things EU and surged to the fore in Italian elections Sunday, turning the founding EU nation into a potential obstructionist just when the bloc was emerging from a decade of economic gloom and seemed poised to rekindle grand ambitions.
Beyond moving away from the EU policies in Brussels, the results in Italy were the latest indication that the continent is tilting further to the right.
Sunday’s stunning outcome came at the end of a seesaw day for the EU that started out well enough when the German Socialists finally threw their weight behind a staunchly pro-Europe grand coalition under Chancellor Angela Merkel. Now, it seemed, the MerkelEmmanuel Macron partnership was on and the GermanFrench engine was primed to push a core group of EU nations toward more unity.
Then, Italy’s results started to come in and the message from Italian voters was clear: “Don’t necessarily count on us.” Instead of a smooth ride under fair weather economic conditions, the bloc should brace for more of the chaos and havoc that anti-EU populists have spread in many member nations over the past few years.
“The European Union is having a bad evening,” France’s far-right Marine Le Pen tweeted elatedly as it became clear that more than half the Italian electorate had backed two stridently anti-EU parties.
Le Pen may have been a washout in last year’s French presidential elections against Macron, and Germany’s established parties may have closed ranks against the right-wing nationalist AfD in Parliament, but populism, sometimes combined with the far right, is thriving and in power from Poland’s shipyards to the coffee tables of Vienna. In Hungary, Viktor Orban has been in power with his style of so-called “illilberal” democracy in Hungary since 2010.
“This is a huge surge for euroskeptic and anti-establishment parties in Italy,” said Nigel Farage, who was a driving force behind Britain’s exit from the EU. His Italian allies in the European Parliament, the 5Star Movement, were the biggest winners in Sunday’s polls.
The brainchild of comedian Beppe Grillo, the 5-Star Movement was long considered an itchy thorn in the EU’s side at best, a droll antidote to the sometimes deadening debate at the European Parliament. So was Farage, until Brexit wiped the smile off legislators.
Pending the outcome of government coalition talks, the 5-Star Movement could set Italy’s EU policy for years to come.