After the elections in Italy: more controversies to come

At an election debate in Milan two weeks ago, Giorgia Meloni was clear about what lies ahead.

– If I win, the fun ends for the EU, as the party leader promised to the Brothers of Italy – who are now expected to form a new government in Rome.

It certainly does not mean that it wants to shut down the entire EU, or see Italy leave the EU, or even that Italy should leave the eurozone. Rather, it’s about pushing for a calmer EU, which doesn’t govern as much and not in many areas as it does today.

Meloni said: “Don’t let Brussels do what Roma could take better care of.

shaky relationship?

Experts still predict that the new government will have to exercise caution, above all because a large aid package from the European Union is so essential to the Italian economy.

– It wouldn’t be the first time a widely skeptical populist government took power in Rome with a promise to negotiate all spending rules, national debts, etc. with Brussels – but almost nothing is happening, says journalist Michele Barbero at a webinar Internet in EPC Think.

– Certainly the relationship between Brussels and Rome will be more fragile than it was under (outgoing Prime Minister Mario) Draghi. But it is not in anyone’s interest to see a full-blown confrontation. We need the money, Barbero notes.

same party group

In the European party group to which Meloni’s party belongs, people are still happy and cheerful optimists.

Otherwise, the conservative, EU-skeptical ECR party brings together, among other things, the Polish ruling party Law and Justice and the Spanish far-right party Vox. Earlier in September, you might also be pleased with the electoral success of another member’s party: the Swedish SD.

Now she is likely to get a third leader at the head of the European Union among the heads of state and government of the member states, when Giorgia Meloni takes her place alongside Poland’s Mateusz Morawiecki and Petr Viala of the Czech Republic.

– It would be a big boost to ECR. In an interview with the news site Politico Europe, Czech Member of the European Parliament Jan Zahradel hopes that we take much more seriously as an important political force.

Even in Spain?

In both Italy and Sweden, ECR parties are now the largest on the right. In both countries, they also cooperate with the traditional right. Hega Italien (Forza Italia), led by Silvio Berlusconi, is expected to be part of the Meloni government, while M and KD hope to form the next Swedish government with SD support.

Similar alliances can also be expected in Spain, for example, where the traditional right-wing PP formed a regional government with Vox in Castile and Leon this spring, and Vox as a party supporting its government in Madrid.

The increasing cooperation of the “natural right” with the far right could in the long run have disastrous consequences for EU cooperation and lead to a situation of greater confrontation between the political parties.

The majority cracks?

In the EU Parliament there has always been a wide majority of Conservatives, Liberals and Social Democrats who have stood behind the EU Commission and concede towards the Midway Policy.

If the right now moves more and more to the right, and in addition – as in Italy – also receives help from parties on the periphery, there is instead fertile ground for a purely right-wing majority after the next EU elections 2024.

The traditional right-wing parties and their party group, the EPP, are receiving harsh criticism from the left.

The EPP is no longer a credible force when it comes to defending European values ​​and Europe’s future. We’ve seen it in Sweden and we may see it in Spain as well, German Social Democratic member of the European Union Udo Polmann tells the Euractiv news site.

Criticism is also present internally within the right.

We must be a firewall against far-right and neo-fascist groups. It is not the job of the bourgeois parties to secure right-wing nationalist governments, says Bavaria’s conservative prime minister, Markus Söder, according to the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.