Italy’s far-right threat has vanished, but a familiar dread returns as Meloni settles into office

After Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni won the national election last September, many expressed alarm that the leader of the Brothers of Italy, a party of neo-fascist origin, would destroy the country to the far right.

By the time he reached his first 100 days in office last week, those fears had evaporated, replaced by fears that the 46-year-old’s first prime minister was driving Italy down the same path. almost every other leader in the past thirty years: a slow decline.

The country suffers from low productivity and low wages; has been tied up in cumbersome red tape and under-invested in research; has no real immigration plan and is increasingly tired of its most promising young people, with 1.2 million young Italians now working abroad for better opportunities.

“What Italy needs now are ideas,” said Nathalie Tocci, an Italian political scientist and director of the Istituto Affari Internazionali, a Rome-based Institute of International Affairs. “And there is none.”

Low expectations for Meloni

Meloni was elected after a brief technical government led by respected former EU banker Mario Draghi. Many Italians expect him to turn the country around.

Compared to Meloni’s very low expectations, Tocci said, he has been prime minister so far.

During the election campaign last fall, Meloni sent fiery denunciations to political correctness and the “LGBT lobby,” declaring zero tolerance for migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea and mocking the European Union, which he had long dismissed as useless, because of his fear.

But on the morning after the election victory, it was Meloni who came down from the stage: sombre, serious, looking more afraid than celebratory.

That sobriety, along with some compromises, had marked his strength for the first three months.

The former Eurosceptic made his first foreign visit to Brussels to convince European Commission Ursula von der Leyen that Italy under her guidance would make good on the promises made by the previous government led by Draghi.

The new Minister of the Interior, Matteo Piantedosi, announced a decree requiring the ships to go directly to port instead of remaining at sea in search of other migrant boats in distress, although the Meloni government backed away from a total ban on NGO migrant rescue ships docking here after a standoff with France .

‘This is clearly a right-wing government’

He raised the legal limit of cash transactions from 2,000 to 5,000 euros (about $5,000 to $7,000 Cdn), but canceled his election promise to loosen restrictions on merchants accepting electronic payments, concessions to the EU and other things he said he would do. a major step back in Italy’s fight against tax evasion.

And while the confidence of his trademark business language wavered when asked about the details of Italy’s economic policy during a press conference last year, he was firmly enough at the helm that the spread of Italian and German 10-year government bonds was a key indicator of confidence. in Italy the ability to pay debts, has shrunk from 2.3 to about 1.8.

After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, it has become a strong supporter of NATO and Ukraine, at least – Italy has some weapons to offer.

“This is a clear right-wing government,” when it comes to economic, security and migration policies, said Cecilia Emma Sottilotta, a political expert at the University of Perugia.

However, he said, compared to Meloni’s coalition partner, League party leader Matteo Salvini, Meloni is more politically savvy.

“They don’t raise the stakes and look for collisions on issues like migration, but avoid them.”

It is now common to hear people who say they will not vote for Meloni also express their happiness for him.

“I’m happy that they have done it themselves,” said Alessandro Caleffi, a Roman dentist who said he had voted for the centre-left.

“He dropped all the horrible campaign propaganda and turned himself into a statesman, a statesman. [Silvio] Berlusconi is in his place.”

That sentiment is starting to show in the polls.

Rising popularity

Meloni’s popularity has risen to more than 30 percent from the 26 percent he and his party achieved in the fall election, despite low voter turnout. Support for Salvini and Berlusconi, on the other hand, has withered.

Meloni can call among his allies and there is almost no opposition.

“It’s been good for him now,” Tocci said. “But the million dollar question is, what will happen if we don’t.”

In the meantime, observers say, without a radical move toward modernization, the country will continue to decline.

The elephant in every decision-making room is debt that approaches 150 percent of GDP – the third heaviest in developed countries, only after Greece and Japan. The European Central Bank plans to raise interest rates and reduce the bond-buying program that helped Italy will only make the debt more difficult to manage.

As the first and one of the hardest hit countries in Europe due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Italy is the largest recipient of the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Fund – around 190 billion euros ($275 billion Cdn) in grants and loans. But the funds come with strict dictates on how they can be used – from digitization and innovation to renewable energy and travel infrastructure – with Meloni already complaining the money is not enough.

But what is missing, observers say, is a political class with sufficient competence, vision and courage to carry out the reforms the country needs to grow and prevent the next generation from leaving.

“Meloni is probably more intelligent than most Italian politicians,” Sottilotta said. “But that’s not enough. There’s a problem with the people around him.”

Italy’s political structure is a problem

The most recent example is Meloni’s appointed Deputy Minister of Justice Giovanni Donzelli. In a tirade against the opposition in parliament last week, he revealed classified information obtained through secret recordings of prisoners.

Many calls to withdraw were ignored.

A top-down electoral system where political parties have a tight grip on who gets into office means there is rare political accountability that can lead to political change, according to political expert Sottilotta.

“It is not a question of this government, but a question of the structural decline of this country – economic, cultural, technological, international,” said Tocci. “Why do we all love Draghi? Because we think, maybe we will reverse the trend.

“But he’s the exception, and we’re back on trend.”