A period of uncertainty began Monday in Italy after the victory in the legislative elections of post-fascist Giorgia Meloni, at the helm of a divided coalition which will have to agree on a government before facing the economic crisis in the face of a Europe and worried markets.
With an absolute majority in Parliament, the leader of Fratelli d’Italia and her allies Matteo Salvini of the League (anti-immigration) and Silvio Berlusconi of Forza Italia (right) will try in the coming days to form a government.
The counting of the ballots confirmed on Monday the clear lead of Ms. Meloni, who won more than 26% of the vote in a context of record abstention (36%).
Giorgia Meloni, who has affirmed her desire to lead the government herself, should become, at 45, the first post-fascist leader of a founding country of Europe.
During her first and brief statement after the vote, she made a point of reassuring, both in Italy and abroad: “We will govern for all” Italians, she promised.
Words that carried with some worried voters met Monday morning in the streets of Rome.
“You have to have confidence, first because she’s a woman, and then because the speech she made was measured,” said Andrea Fogli, an artist in her sixties.
Below 9%, a score halved compared to 2018, Matteo Salvini is paying a high price for the League’s participation in successive governments since 2018, but has ruled out resigning. “With Giorgia we will talk to each other today to think, quickly and well, about the next government,” he explained.
“He will have a more marginal role than he would like in the formation of the government”, analyzed for AFP Sofia Ventura, professor of political science at the University of Bologna, excluding that he returns to the ministry of Interior, where he had imposed the blocking of the reception of migrants.
” Disaster “
Abroad, French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne warned that Paris would be “attentive” to “respect” human rights and the right of women to have an abortion. For Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albarés, “populism always ends in disaster”. Berlin, for its part, expects Italy to remain “very favorable to Europe”.
Ms Meloni, on the other hand, received the enthusiastic support of the pet peeves of Brussels, Poland and Hungary, as well as congratulations from the far-right Spanish party VOX and the National Rally in France.
In Rome, the right-wing press exulted: “Revolution at the polls”, headlined Il Giornalethe daily life of the Berlusconi family, while Libero observed: “The beaten left, (we are) free!!! “.
The boss of the Democratic Party (PD, left) Enrico Letta lamented “a sad day for Italy” and announced, after his disappointing result, that he would step down at the next party congress. “The PD will not allow Italy to leave the heart of Europe, to free itself from European values and the values of the European Constitution”.
Economic challenges
The new executive will succeed the cabinet of national unity led since January 2021 by Mario Draghi, the former head of the European Central Bank (ECB), called to the bedside of the third economy in the euro zone brought to its knees by the pandemic.
Draghi had negotiated with Brussels the granting of nearly 200 billion euros in financial aid to Italy in exchange for deep economic and institutional reforms, a windfall which represents the lion’s share of the European recovery plan.
Despite the stakes, several parties which had agreed to join his government (Fratelli d’Italia had remained in the opposition) ended up bringing him down this summer, for purely electoral reasons, leading to the calling of early legislative elections.
And while “Super Mario”, presented as the savior of the euro zone during the 2008 financial crisis, appeared as a guarantee of credibility in the eyes of its European partners, the coming to power of the far right nationalist, eurosceptic and sovereignty raises fears of a new era of instability.
Especially since Italy, which is crumbling under a debt representing 150% of GDP, the highest ratio in the euro zone behind Greece, is experiencing inflation of more than 9% with gas and electricity bills that put millions of people in difficulty.
The Milan Stock Exchange was up on Monday morning, the victory of the far right having been widely anticipated by the markets. Friday, the Italian place had fallen by 3.36%, suffering the largest decline among the major European stock markets.
A sign of investors’ persistent concerns about Italy’s debt, the “spread”, that is to say the closely watched gap between the German 10-year borrowing rate which refers to and that of Italy to ten years, climbed to 235 points on Monday, up 6.68%.