Giorgia Meloni: Will Italy rock the boat?

Europe's decisive swing to the right continues

It appears that Italy, one of the European Union’s largest economies, will turn decisively to the right in its politics. While the exact final results are yet to be determined, all indications are that a right-wing alliance will win the general elections in Italy with more than 40 per cent of the votes cast. The coalition will likely be led by a new right-populist party known as the Brothers of Italy, led by the controversial Giorgia Meloni, who has in the past expressed admiration for the country’s past Fascist leader, Benito Mussolini. Ms Meloni’s party, which received less than 5 per cent of the vote in the last general elections, has surged to dominate the Italian right with an expected quarter of the total vote. It has largely replaced its coalition partner, the former Northern League, led by Matteo Salvini, which was tarnished by association with past unpopular governments. The League will receive far less than 10 per cent of the votes; a similar amount will go to the Forza Italia party of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. Thus the future government in Italy will clearly reflect Ms Meloni’s positions and priorities.

Italy is not alone. Across Europe, within and outside the European Union, the pressure of an uneven recovery from the pandemic and price rises caused by the Ukraine war have led to a renaissance of the right. In Sweden, recent elections saw the far-right Sweden Democrats make great gains and achieve influence over the government for the first time in that country’s history. In the United Kingdom, a change of the guard in the ruling Conservative Party has caused the country’s economic management to move sharper to the right than at any point since Margaret Thatcher. Yet the Italian government will have a far greater influence on the future of Europe than the Swedes or the British. There is very real concern that Ms Meloni will reveal herself to be a eurosceptic at a time when co-ordinated action by the EU is more important than ever. Brussels has to maintain pressure on illiberal regimes in Hungary and Poland; it has to manage the economic fallout of the Ukraine invasion and the energy crunch; and it has to administer a vast spending increase meant to ease the Union’s path out of the pandemic and green the EU economy. Ms Meloni might be more sympathetic to Russia than other Europeans would like, and would likely hold up efforts to pressure Hungary’s autocrat, Viktor Orban.

But more generally, Ms Meloni will no doubt discover it is in her interest and her party’s to not rock the European boat other than rhetorically. The fact is that Italy is by far the largest recipient of common European recovery funds, and anything that jeopardises that flow of cash will make it much harder for her to govern. Italy’s own Covid recovery plan is worth almost ^200 billion, and much of that cash will be coming from the rest of Europe. Funds over the next year alone are likely to add an entire percentage point to Italian GDP. Brussels might be concerned, but it will likely wait and watch and see if Ms Meloni and her populists can be bought off. And if not, the rest of Europe knows that Italian prime ministers tend not to last too long in office anyway.