© REUTERS/Francois Lenoir

Ahead of last month’s European Parliament elections, Italian deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini announced he would be forming a pan-European alliance with France’s failed second-round presidential candidate Marine Le Pen in order to create a new far-right European group to disrupt the European Union from the inside.

There was just one problem. Le Pen and Salvini were already in such a European Parliament alliance: the Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF) group.

On Thursday, Le Pen held a press conference in the European Parliament to announce that her project with Salvini had been a success. They had met the threshold to form a group in the Parliament—a total of at least 25 MEPs from at least seven different member states—and had decided to call their group “Identity and Democracy” (ID).

“We have changed the political chessboard of the EU,” Le Pen declared.

But as she described the group’s composition and goals, it became clear that it was virtually indiscernible from the ENF. The far-right euroskeptic parties in the group are mostly the same, with the addition of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which has left the British Conservatives’ European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group to join the far-right.

The addition of the German AfD, combined with the huge increase of Salvini’s Lega seats (up from five to 29) nearly doubles the far-right group’s size. While ENF had 37 seats, the ID group will have 73. This gives them 10 percent of seats in this term, compared to 5 percent in the previous term.

But even though more seats means more resources and greater influence in parliamentary committees, ID will likely remain the smallest group in the European Parliament, coming two seats behind the Greens. And given the lack of difference from the ENF, it’s hard to see how its influence in the parliament is going to be any different. Moreover, its failure to woo members of the center-right European Peoples Party, notably Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz, will deny it the numerical heft that Salvini craves.

Political Pygmy

Both Le Pen and Salvini are themselves former MEPs, and they have had long experience with the parliament’s various far-right blocs over the years. Though much of the media has breathlessly portrayed their latest project as a new development that could destabilize the EU, the reality is that the presence of far-right groups goes back to 2007.

That group was called “Identity, Tradition, and Sovereignty”, but it didn’t last long. By the end of 2007 it had disbanded after Italian MEP Alessandra Mussolini (yes, the dictator’s granddaughter) made insulting remarks about Romanians on the parliament floor. MEPs from the irredentist Greater Romania party quit the group in protest, causing it to fall below the threshold needed to be an official group.

Such has been the history of the attempts to form a “nationalist international” in the European Parliament over the past decade. Through the years the far-right bloc continued to exist, though it was not officially recognized because it did not have enough MEPs. In these years Le Pen was teamed with Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders, who is now in the political wilderness after having suffered a humiliating defeat in the Dutch European election.

The new ID MEPs, who will be led by Salvini’s foreign policy advisor Marco Zanni, were at pains at Thursday’s press conference to say that ID is not just a renamed ENF. No wonder, given ENF’s paltry record of achievements. Its members, especially Lega and Front National (which Le Pen has also renamed) MEPs, barely showed up to Brussels or Strasbourg, preferring to focus on national issues. Their record of cooperation is virtually non-existent, and they were so invisible in the last parliament term that many journalists forgot they existed.

Farage in the Wilderness

The stated aim of the group is to return power to EU national capitals, curb immigration, and prevent the spread of Islam in Europe. With such a platform it might seem a natural home for Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party, the successor to the UK Independence Party (UKIP) in Brussels.

But Farage has not had a good relationship with Le Pen in the past. After the 2014 election, she and Wilders tried to cajole Farage into taking his UKIP MEPs into a common Euroskeptic group with them, but they were rebuffed. The most important thing for UKIP has been to have a group in which Farage is the leader, so he can be given long speaking time at the top of the Parliament’s major debates and create clips for British news and his online fan base. Farage has also been wary of being associated with Le Pen, who is seen as an extremist by most people in the UK.

Farage has had his own group in the parliament since 2009, Europe of Freedom and Democracy. After the last European election in 2014, he and Le Pen were in a race to attract euroskeptic parties, and Farage won. Le Pen was unable to form a group until one year later in 2015, barely reaching the threshold.

This time around, it appears Le Pen has won. Though the ID group was briefly in talks with Farage to bring his Brexit Party MEPs into the fold, those talks went nowhere. Now, with time running out and Italy’s Five Star Movement (M5S) wary of continuing its unsuccessful alliance with Farage, it looks as if the EFD will cease to exist.

Zanni, who held the talks with Farage, said that the door remains open to the Brexit Party. “We were unable to create a united group for a number of reasons with the Brexit party,” he said. “It’s not a defeat; it’s a very open relationship; we are open to them if they want to cooperate.” He said they are also in talks with Spain’s new far-right party Vox, which has not yet chosen a group.

But it now seems even more unlikely than before that these far-right parties can cooperate with Farage. That’s because the UK’s Brexit chaos has scared Europe’s far-right parties away from the idea of their countries leaving the EU. Le Pen performed an about-face in 2017, changing her party’s position from wanting to leave the EU and the eurozone to wanting to stay in both. Lega and M5S also no longer advocate for Italexit, making the latter’s continued membership in Farage’s group rather untenable.

At their press conference, the ID MEPs were keen to stress that they are not a group that is against the EU’s existence. “Some people say that we want to destroy the EU, I want to contradict that,” said AfD MEP Jörg Meuthen. “The EU needs to be limited and reformed”.

New Names, Same Faces

The new names for these groups and parties will not change the reality that nationalist parties have difficulty working together. It is difficult to demonize foreigners and cooperate with them at the same time, as Alessandra Mussolini learned in 2007.

Indeed, it is a lesson her grandfather learned as well, always having to strike a balance between glorifying Italy and placating Hitler, who often spoke of Mediterranean peoples’ inferiority. This was one of the reasons that Franco never took Spain into the Axis—he distrusted international cooperation.

As the dust settles on the group formation process ahead of the first plenary sitting on July 1, what we are likely to see emerge is an enlarged far-right group that has benefitted from Brexit, picking up new members from two groups, Farage’s EFD and the British Conservatives’ ECR, which will likely no longer exist after the departure of UK MEPs.

But the ID group will probably still be the smallest, unable to block legislation. ID MEPs will probably still not show up. And the “far-right disruptor” that the media has been so preoccupied with over the next months will not materialize. At least, not in the context of the European Parliament.

The post The EU’s Overhyped Far-Right Alliance appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Remo Casilli

It’s a question that is being asked increasingly frequently these days: Does the nationalist-populist Italian government really want to lead the country out of the eurozone? Is that what Matteo Salvini, who is drifting further and further to the right, wants? The head of the Lega was effectively already setting the tone of the government, in his role as interior minister and vice-premier, especially when it comes to migrants. Now, ever since his party won the European elections with 34 percent of the votes, he seems to have effectively slipped into the role of head of government, determining financial policy and relations with the EU as well.

Salvini likes to use “Brussels” as a scapegoat. On the one hand it’s migration—the EU wants to turn Italy into Europe’s home for asylum seekers, he warns his supporters; on the other it’s “austerity policy”—which he says has brought Italy to its knees. Political scientist Vittorio Emanuele Parsi believes that his arguments are not always without merit. “Because it’s true that the EU’s measures have turned crises that could probably have been overcome with other approaches into chronic weaknesses. Salvini, however, is only focusing the spotlight on one part of the problems. He completely ignores the fact that Italy has also contributed to this.”

“Italians First”

Salvini pulls out his motto “Prima gli italiani,” or “Italians first,” like a miracle weapon whenever the opportunity presents itself. That is particularly so now that the European Commission has recommended an excessive deficit procedure against Rome because the government did not abide by the agreements negotiated with Brussels in December 2018. Instead of falling, the national debt has risen further to 134 percent of GDP.

As expected, Salvini was unimpressed by this EU measure. “If the ones in the EU like to do so, they can go on sending letters,” he let Brussels know, arguing he would not let it dissuade him from his plan to introduce the promised flat tax—which would cost another €30 billion—because “it is not only our right, but our duty to reduce the tax burden.”

The suspicion that he might be up to something completely different, namely leaving the EU altogether, so-called Italexit, is not based solely on the harsh words spoken to Brussels, but on another initiative that comes from the Lega. Exactly two days after the European elections, on May 28, the Italian parliament approved a motion obliging the government to introduce “mini bots.”

The Bots Are Coming

The abbreviation “bot” stands for “Buono ordinario del Tesoro” and is a short-term debt instrument with which Italy finances itself, quite legally, on the internal and international markets. However, the situation is quite different with the mini bots already provided for in the coalition agreement. These are to be offered in small denominations, ranging from €5 to €500, have no expiry date, and primarily serve to repay the debts of public administrations to private companies. These amount to €57 billion. Companies would then be able to pay social and tax contributions. Many economists, however, see something else behind it, namely the first step toward a parallel currency.

And they may be right because the current Lega chairman of the budget committee, Claudio Borghi, declared exactly that in a 2017 video. The president of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, also seems to suspect plans for a parallel currency, which is why he spoke out against it at a press conference in Vilnius at the beginning of June. Either it is a payment instrument that is equivalent to money, which is forbidden in the monetary union, he said, or it is additional debt.

After the international sensation that the mini bots have caused, Premier Giuseppe Conte and Finance Minister Giovanni Tria, both of whom are independents and not members of either governing party, were eager to calm things down and assure people that these instruments would not be implemented. But where were they when the motion was tabled?

And the question that now arises is how far Salvini really wants to go. “Salvini will pull the brake at the last moment,” predicts economics professor Maurizio Ferrera who recalls an incident last November when a tranche of Italian government bonds remained almost entirely unsold. “There is talk of tens of billions of euros. Not even the Chinese had taken up the offer, even though they are among the most important buyers of our bonds. At that time Salvini was in a clinch with Brussels because of the Italian budget and the markets reacted nervously.” Ferrera believes it is quite possible that both the officials of the Italian National Bank and those of the government office persuaded him to act responsibly at the time.

Italy has to release government bonds on the market almost every month, and the more unstable the government is, and the wilder its economic and financial policy are, the more cautious the big investors become. And so, at the end of the year a deficit of 2.04 percent was agreed with the EU instead of the 2.4 percent initially demanded. The same could happen now. “Salvini must show consideration for his clientele,” Ferrera says. And a large part of them, at least in northern Italy, would not approve of a further increase in risk conditions and certainly not of Italy’s withdrawal from the euro. An opinion that Parsi also shares. “Salvini is a great opportunist,” he says. “He is only interested in one thing, the maintenance of power, not the principles.”

A Flash in the Pan?

But would an Italexit even work—for example, via a referendum, as in the United Kingdom? Parsi says no. “Our constitution prohibits them in the case of international agreements.” So, if Italy, in an extreme case, violated the treaties, it could only be thrown out of the eurozone. This is an option that had already been considered in the case of Greece, but then rejected, not least because German banks in particular would have suffered as a result. Ferrera also believes that while the other member states could bail out Greece that is not possible when it comes to Italy, which is also too big to fail. “But beside this, if there were a serious danger of being thrown out, our president, Sergio Mattarella, would intervene, address the nation, and bring the politicians back to their senses, I am sure of that.”

Since Italians know themselves since the economic crisis that they shouldn’t alienate the financial markets, the danger of an Italexit could prove to be a flash in the pan. It is doubtful, however, that there is going to be a more harmonious relationship between Rome and Brussels in the future, especially now that the new EU posts are due to be filled.

Today, three Italians hold top positions: Draghi, Antonio Tajani, the president of the European Parliament, and Federica Mogherini, High Representative of the EU’s Foreign and Security Policy. But that could change drastically now, and Italy risks having to settle for second-rank posts. If it were up to Salvini, he would like to see an Italian as the EU Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs. But it is doubtful that this wish will come true.

The post Is Italy Heading for the Door? appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/ Remo Casilli

Italy’s deputy prime minister, Luigi Di Maio, did not look like a man under siege. Dressed in a suit and tie, the dapper 32-year-old flashed a smile as he faced the media last Friday (Nov. 9) to complain about persistent attacks on the government, questions about its long-term survival, and whether its controversial budget would be rejected by Brussels.

The head of the populist Five Star Movement (M5S) had weathered one of his toughest weeks since his populist party and the far-right League party had formed their uneasy ruling coalition this summer.

“Repeat after me: ‘The government will not fall, the government will not fall’,” Di Maio jokingly urged journalists at the Foreign Press Club in Rome.

Italy has been on a collision course with Brussels after presenting a 2019 budget plan that the European Commission warned would raise the country’s deficit to around 2.9 percent of GDP in 2019, veering very close to the 3 percent limit allowed by the EU in its rules on debt and deficit. The Commission has demanded a correction to the draft budget, but Italian leaders are refusing to budge, spurning Europe’s demands to present a new, revised plan by Tuesday. The standoff has sparked uncertainty on financial markets and triggered fears across Europe that Italy’s ballooning debt will drag down the rest of the eurozone.

But DiMaio’s eurozone woes are just the beginning. He’s also facing growing problems much closer to home, where he’s been dealing with an internal revolt after five of his Five Star senators abstained from a confidence vote called by Interior Minister Matteo Salvini over his controversial security bill, a decree that clamps down on migration and asylum. The senators are against the legislation because they felt it strips away all humanitarian protection for migrants and is inconsistent with Five Star values. They’re now facing a party inquiry for abstaining, and they could be expelled.

“Will there be consequences? I am not afraid,” said one of the rebel senators, Paola Nugnes, a Neopolitan elected in 2013.

Di Maio has also faced embarrassing questions about the future of Rome’s Five Star mayor, Virginia Raggi. She swept into office promising to end corruption, overhaul public transport,  close Roma camps, and promote business and tourism. Instead, Rome is sinking in trash and potholes, and thousands of Romans took to the streets in late October to protest the capital’s run-down conditions. At the same time, Raggi has been embroiled in a scandal over corrupt hiring practices after appointing the brother of a close ally to be Rome’s tourism chief. While she was cleared of the charges, she remains deeply unpopular for failing to stop the city’s degradation and modernize its shoddy public transport.

 If all that wasn’t bad enough, the Italian daily, La Repubblica, accused Di Maio’s father, Antonio, who runs a construction business, of building an extension on the family home back in 2006 without securing a permit.

Di Maio lashed back, saying: “To all these people who spew poison at me, and the Five Star Movement, every day I say, ‘Give us a little more love.’”

Duelling Deputies

The foundation of Di Maio’s political future is a marriage of convenience with Salvini, who is now widely considered Italy’s most powerful political leader. Backed by a relentless social media team, Salvini’s aggressive anti-immigrant platform and his outspoken criticism of the EU have helped to lift his party’s popularity to 30.5 percent, while M5S has dipped to 28.5 percent, according to a recent poll. The coalition government, in other words, is still widely successful. But political differences between the two deputy prime ministers are constantly making headlines.

Last week, Salvini scheduled a parliamentary confidence vote after a slew of Five Star amendments to his security decree, which makes it easier to deport refugees and migrants who have arrived in Italy in recent years. The bill would also put an end to two-year “humanitarian protection” residency permits that were given to 25 percent of asylum-seekers last year. The lower house of parliament has until the end of November to approve it.

Separately, Di Maio and Salvini have clashed fiercely over changes to overhaul the statute of limitations on trials. M5S, which made fighting corruption their battlecry in getting elected to the government, wants to ease the limits on prosecuting a series of infractions, including white collar crimes. After much wrangling, Di Maio and Salvini were able to save face and strike a last-minute compromise.

Yet the leaders’ opposing views over yet another issue–the future of the TAV Turin-Lyon high-speed rail link–were thrown into stark contrast over the weekend. The project has sparked fierce debate in Italy, pitting environmentalists, who object to constructing a 60-kilometer-long tunnel between between Maurienne in France and the Susa Valley in Turin, against those who favor its development.

League supporters see the project as a means of creating jobs and growth: more than 30,000 people took to the streets of Turin to demand that the rail link proceed. Salvini, meanwhile, has consistently voiced his support for the 270-kilometer rail link. “I am convinced that Italy needs more projects, more bridges, more roads, more railways, more airports, not fewer,” he said on the issue.

But the budget for the link has mushroomed. Originally slated to cost €9.6 billion, Italy’s transport minister Danilo Toninelli said recently it would now cost €26.1 billion. “I can only feel anger and disgust at how Italians’ money has been wasted,” wrote Toninelli, a M5S member, on Facebook in July.

Amid all the turmoil, unnamed League sources have started speculating about an imminent coalition collapse and potential elections in March. Salvini has tried to quash rumors, saying in a statement: “There is no conflict, we are working well with the Five Star Movement. Our government has very high popularity levels and in five months we have done more than anyone else.  We are going forward united in order to change the country.”

Five Star Turmoil

While Di Maio also insists there’s no risk to the government’s long-term survival, he is facing yet another challenge within the party, and not only from the rebel senators who abstained from the confidence vote.

Soon he will have to deal with the return of Alessandro Di Battista, a popular M5S politician and former MP currently on sabbatical with his family in South America who is widely seen as Di Maio’s main rival. Di Battista is openly critical of Salvini and is often dubbed “Five Star’s Che Guevara” because of his passion for the Latin American revolutionary, and he’s considered the movement’s most prominent leftist. He has often adopted a hardline against political corruption while criticizing the League’s hardline stance on immigration.

He decided not to run in this year’s national election but regularly expresses his outspoken opinions to his 1.5 million Facebook followers, with his partner and toddler by his side. His return to Italy in December is certain to highlight internal policy differences and exacerbate divisions between M5S and the League.

Giovanni Orsina, professor of political history at Rome’s Luiss University, says M5S is an ideologically complex movement still in its infancy, and under Di Maio it has appeared ambiguous about its policies while allowing the more aggressive League to largely set the political agenda.

“Parts of the Five Star Movement are very unhappy with this government and they think Di Maio is not negotiating hard enough,” he said. “But the movement has not yet grown up.”

The biggest priority for the coalition right now is winning the European Union’s approval on the budget, which they insist will only total 2.4 percent of GDP, not 2.9 percent as the European Commission has predicted.  And it would seem that neither Di Maio nor Salvini want to tear their coalition apart before the European elections in May.

But as M5S is struggling to evolve from a grass roots, populist protest movement into a fully-fledged political party with coherent policies, that is becoming an increasingly difficult task.

“They have a major identity crisis,” says Orsina. “They know what they don’t want, but they don’t know what they want. I still believe the coalition will survive until the European elections. But anything can happen and the pressure certainly is growing.”

The post A Stress Test for Italy’s Coalition appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

Artwork © Dominik Herrmann

When Matteo Salvini headed to the beach this summer for his first swim of the season, he posed for a selfie that deliberately exposed his flabby belly. He wanted to remind his political supporters that he was one of them.

It wasn’t the first time. Italy’s brash interior minister, who thrives on upending political perceptions with his devil-may-care attitude, once made the cover of a weekly magazine wearing only a tie—even though he rarely wears one with a jacket.

Salvini may not be prime minister just yet, but most Italians agree it is only a question of time. There is no doubt he is the dominant force in Italian politics. Since his rejuvenated Lega party formed a coalition government with the populist Five Star Movement (M5S) in June, his popularity has surged and his right-wing party is now the most popular in the country.  He has even flirted with running for the presidency of the European Commission.

With his anti-immigrant stance and open hostility toward the European Union, Salvini is determined to reshape the political landscape in Italy and Europe, and according to the latest polls, one-third of the country is right behind him.

“Italians come from several decades where they completely mistrusted politicians,” says Lorenzo Marsili, director of European Alternatives, a citizen’s movement based in Berlin. “They think he is less likely to cheat them because he looks like them and speaks like them.”

An Unlikely Rise

Salvini does not fit the traditional mold of an Italian politician. Born in Milan in 1973, he studied political science and history at the University of Milan but dropped out before his final exams. He was involved in left-wing politics before joining the right-wing party then known as Lega Nord (“Northern League”) in 1990. He ran its radio station, Radio Padania, for several years.

In this traditional Catholic country, he married, but then got divorced. He has a son, Federico, from his marriage, as well as a daughter, Mirta, from a subsequent relationship that ended in 2012. He is currently engaged to a popular TV host.

Driven by acute political instincts and ruthless ambition, Salvini easily secured the leadership of the Lega in 2013. He drew on his experience as a local Milan city councilor and member of the European Parliament to reposition the party and give it a nation-wide identity.But it was his ability to tap into the concerns of average Italians and his clever exploitation of social media that secured his popularity.

Drawing inspiration from the success of US President Donald Trump, Salvini has adopted the slogan “Italians First.” In his campaign for the March election, he promised to deport 500,000 illegal immigrants, take a tougher stance on crime, introduce a flat tax, abolish the EU fiscal compact, and even legalize brothels.

The Lega’s share of the vote surged from a dismal four percent to nearly 18 percent, easily surpassing the party of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. It became the dominant right-wing player—but not quite dominant enough to seize power on its own. Salvini was forced to seek a marriage of convenience with the populist Five Star Movement.

Immigration was at the top of Salvini’s agenda. No sooner was he appointed interior minister than he made global headlines by refusing to allow a private vessel carrying 629 refugees and migrants rescued off the coast of Libya to dock in Italy. “Go wherever you want, but not to Italy,” Salvini tweeted after he closed the ports to migrants.

A majority of Italians endorsed Salvini’s hard line, and the ship ended up docking in Spain. “The closing of the ports in order to trigger EU solidarity drew a surprisingly positive response despite the extremism of kidnapping people on a boat,” said Marsili, author of Citizens of Nowhere. “People like this strongarm attitude because they don’t believe that democracy is changing Europe, and unfortunately they are right.”

Media Machine

Working with France’s far-right leader Marine Le Pen, Hungary’s nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, and others from the right, Salvini is aiming to overthrow the European Union’s liberal establishment, reinforce the borders, and restore power to nation states―an agenda many see as a threat to European unity.

Miraculously, he avoided major fallout after the Lega’s founder and former leader, Umberto Bossi, was convicted for illegally using public funds for family expenses. In September, a Genoa court ruled prosecutors could begin to sequester up to €48.9 million in funds from accounts and businesses belonging to the party until the money Bossi had swindled could be recouped. Salvini has lashed back, calling it a “political trial.”

Everything Salvini does is backed by a communications machine that has revolutionized Italy’s political landscape. He has 3.2 million followers on Facebook and 900,000 on Twitter. Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon told Reuters news agency that US politicians could learn a lot from Salvini’s methods. “The use of social media and Facebook Live … were state of the art,” said Bannon, who has met Salvini more than once. He also invited him to join the “Movement”, an organization Bannon set up in Brussels to promote economic nationalism and right-wing populism in Europe. “I was blown away by how sophisticated he was, and how he managed to do it on a shoestring.”

Salvini’s ten-member social media team, dubbed the “Beast,” pumps out messages across YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram, with tweets including xenophobic rants, promotion of his achievements, or upcoming radio and TV appearances—even photos of his favorite pesto sauce or pizza. Thus Salvini’s rate of social media engagement surpasses Trump. Now the Lega is polling as high as 34 percent and has overtaken its M5S coalition partner.

Trouble Ahead?

Well before this year’s election, Salvini had questioned the value of the euro and adopted a position that was very critical of the EU. Since then, he has stepped up his attacks. Most recently, the conflict over Rome’s 2019 budget is providing him with ammunition against Brussels. Despite a binding commitment by an earlier Italian government, Salvini’s coalition inists on increasing spending and running a 2.4 percent deficit next year.

With the stock market in decline and the bond spread rising to its highest level in five years, Salvini was asked what he thought of opposition from the EU and the Bank of Italy to the proposed budget. “This is really a demonstration that we are right,” Salvini told the Italian daily La Stampa on October 18. “The spread will fall. All the economic data is positive.”

Professor Francesco Giavazzi, a leading economist at Bocconi University in Milan, said Salvini flourished by creating an “external enemy,” whether it is the European Commission or the European Central Bank. Given the conflict over the budget and its effects on the financial markets, Giavazzi warned Italy was on the edge of an economic abyss unlike anything it had seen in the past 70 years.

“The fact that the government continues to enjoy widespread popularity is little consolation,” he said.  “Juan Peron, and more recently the Kirchners, were acclaimed by immense crowds, but this did not prevent Argentina which was one of the richest countries in the world just a century ago from becoming a place in which per capita income is now similar to that of Mexico.”

Salvini prefers to blame Brussels or Berlin when questions about the Italian budget or border controls arise. But he is not ready to walk away from the European Union just yet. In fact the Lega leader is staking his political future on the European elections in May 2019, in the hope that they will not only help him reshape the EU but reaffirm his political dominance at home as well.

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