The striking tranquillity of Italian politics
No minister, with or without portfolio, has so far resigned; and only one undersecretary, the controversial presenter and art populariser Vittorio Sgarbi, has left the current government. No one dares to discuss Meloni's name to continue chairing the Council of Ministers, nor is there any movement among the parliamentary groups in a political life where ‘transfuguism’ has become famous, but is not happening at the moment.
There is an immediate reason for all this: the overwhelming electoral triumph of the centre-right over a divided centre-left in the last ‘political’ elections, which meant that in the Senate alone Meloni had almost two dozen votes left over to maintain his ‘maggioranza’. It is not surprising, therefore, that someone with an obvious desire for notoriety such as former ‘premier’ Matteo Renzi has been campaigning for a year for the European Parliament elections to be held on 9 June, since he knows that in national politics he has nothing better to do than attend Senate meetings and, from time to time, campaign in the elections for the government of a particular region (the latest, Basilicata).
It has been said ad nauseam that Italy was an ungovernable country, and that governments lasted on average little more than a year. But this does not correspond to reality. Do some people know that, since 1996, all legislatures have lasted the five years stipulated by the 1948 Constitution, with the exception of 2006-08 and 2018-22, the latter of which is only six months short of the five-year mark? Do the same people know that three prime ministers have already managed to make their government last at least 1,000 days, which is almost the same as three consecutive years? Because the late Silvio Berlusconi achieved this between 2001 and 2005, and between 2008 and 2011; Bettino Craxi had already done the same between 1983 and 1986; and Matteo Renzi, despite becoming prime minister at the age of 39, also achieved more than 1,000 consecutive days in government between February 2014 and December 2016.
Moreover, if we take as a reference the history of Republican Italy (June 1946-), we observe that Alcide de Gasperi was able to string together eight consecutive governments between 1945 and 1953; or that the 1963-68 legislature (also four and a half years long) saw only one prime minister (Aldo Moro, at the head of three consecutive governments). Not only that, but the Christian Democrats (DC) won all the national elections between 1946 and 1992, with the exception of the 1984 European elections. So there is instability, but far less than you might think. And now the centre-right is preparing to spend a whole legislature in power: the worst thing that could happen to Meloni at this point is that President Mattarella asks him to make a change of government in the middle of the legislature, which would split the 19th Legislature between the Meloni-I government and the Meloni-II government.
So ‘bored’ are the transalpine politicians that now, in view of the European Parliament elections, they have decided to ‘run’, even though voters know that neither Meloni, Salvini nor Schlein, to name but a few names, have the slightest intention of going to Europe. In reality, only two people are ‘running’ with an eye on a future in the EU institutions. One of them is Matteo Renzi, who is part of the candidacy ‘With Emma Bonino for the United States of Europe’, and who hopes that hand in hand with his friend French President Macron he can achieve something of relevance that will give a boost to a virtually stalled career: the presidency of the European Council, the launch of the European Army (which Macron wants and of which Renzi is one of its strongest supporters), or, as a minor reward, an important commissionership (let's remember that another former president of the Council of Ministers, Paolo Gentiloni, has been the commissioner for Economic Affairs from 2019 to the present moment).
The other ‘candidate’ is Antonio Tajani, leader of Forza Italia. Although he is currently deputy prime minister and foreign affairs minister, he has very good contacts in the Union (remember that, in addition to having been an MEP and commissioner for more than twenty years, he even presided over the European Parliament). Like Renzi, he thinks he can also be president of the European Council, and even president of the Commission, although, in reality, the most desired by all is none other than the prestigious economist and financier Mario Draghi.
Apart from them, what the rest of the leaders are doing in relation to the elections to the European Parliament is nothing more than pure ‘posturing’. And some of them are taking more than their fair share of risks. This is the case of Ely Schlein, secretary general of the Democratic Party (PD) since February 2023. This young Bolognese jurist has gone from defeat to defeat (Lazio, Lombardy, Unmbria, Basilicata, etc.), and her poor record is reduced to a victory in the elections for the Sardinian government, which she won by the narrowest of margins and thanks to the lack of collaboration between the three centre-right parties.
Schlein's main risk is that, not only will he not be able to raise the pitiful 19% of the vote obtained by the PD in the September 2022 elections, but he may not even surpass what Nicola Zingaretti obtained five years ago (22.9% of the vote). Zingaretti also had the advantage that he had been elected secretary general of the party only three months earlier, which gave him little room for manoeuvre, and that he was supported by the party apparatus (as well as dominating one of the PD's major currents). Now, Schlein, who has not been at the head of the party for three months, but who, by the time of the European elections, will have spent almost a year and a half since she surprisingly won the PD primaries, risks, with a poor result, being ousted by the party's ‘heavyweights’. A party that, since its foundation back in October 2007, has been crushed in the general elections of 2008, 2018 and 2022, and which won the 2013 elections by the narrowest of margins. And which has already had four elected general secretaries and three more interim general secretaries: shouldn't they be thinking about a re-foundation? It would be better for them.
And President Meloni is not doing anything special: the country went from +3.8% growth in 2022 to +0.9% in 2023, and in this first quarter of the year it has only managed to add a poor +0.3%. The national debt to GDP ratio has improved substantially in recent times: from 147.1% to 137.3% at the end of 2023. But even these figures cannot hide this reality, as it is due to the loss of population: if the average Italian owed 45,410 euros in 2021, this figure now rises to 48,535. The risk premium is quite low (134 percentage points), and the public accounts are in order, but the truth is that the transalpine citizenry has resigned itself to the fact that there is no political alternative despite the fact that important structural changes are still pending. Fed up with Renzi and Salvini, no major politician has emerged in recent times, so Meloni has every reason to be reassured.
Where Roman politics does seem to have made significant achievements is on the controversial issue of migration: after signing agreements with the Albanian and Egyptian governments, there are still flows of irregular immigrants, but in much smaller numbers. That's the thing about having gone from Euroscepticism to Europeanism: now the EU authorities do help, in exchange for forgetting about Trump and company. And that has its very positive effects.
We have to go back to the 17th Legislature (2023-18) to see the five years established by the Constitution fulfilled. But, at least today, everything seems to indicate that we will see this legislature complete five years of life once again. The fact is that the eleven years (2011-22) that the centre-right spent ‘crossing through the desert’ have been an excessively long ‘lapse’ of time for a part of the parliamentary arc traditionally accustomed to holding the presidency of the Council of Ministers. As a result, we are living through a period of striking tranquillity that can be altered by the natural tendency of the transalpine political class to seek conflict. However, at present, there is no hint of it, nor is there any indication that it will take place.
Pablo Martín de Santa Olalla Saludes is a lecturer at the Camilo José Cela University (UCJC) and author of the book ‘Italia, 2018-2023. De la esperanza a la desafección’ (Líber Factory, 2023).