According to Antonio Astolfi (QMUL), the Italian turnaround shows that optimism is overstated as a comeback of Salvini in power is still looming.
As far as four months ago, the European Union (EU) seemed to be on the verge of a populist triumph. Amid external and internal challenges, including an openly Eurosceptic US President launching a tariff war, the spectre of a disorderly no-deal Brexit and the havoc prompted by Mr Matteo Salvini on migration in the Mediterranean, those betting on the disintegration of the EU felt that time was finally ripe. Indeed, the core principles of Atlanticism, Europeanisation and Multilateralism have been under attack for some time. Prior to the May 2019 European Parliament elections, many shuddered thinking about the far-reaching consequences of an epoch-making European electoral showdown.
Contrary to some expectations, however, the election results of the eve of the 29th of May were unanimously hailed as a setback to Eurosceptic forces. Numbers at the polls were (with an average of 8.9% for populist radical-right parties and 19.2% for other right-wing forces), yet signalling that - in light of the absence of a populist landslide victory and considerable wins for fringe parties such as the Greens and the Liberals – the relevance of earlier electoral predictions and analyses had perhaps been slightly overstated. Despite Eurosceptic party-grouping within Parliament remaining fractured and less decisive than expected, keeping all ranks and files MEPs of the three-party majority coalition (European People Party, Socialist & Democrats and Renew Europe) in line throughout the five-years legislature will be no small test.
Besides the European level, it is primarily in domestic settings where the contours of resistance to populists are newly drawn. As the New York Times noted, European national legislatures are indeed standing in the way of populist leaders. It is as if amid the battle over people representation, and the often-claimed gap between elites and the people, democratic institutions are proving far more resilient than expected in putting the brakes on populists’ power grabs. In this sense, the recent institutional face-offs that broke out in Italy, UK and Poland are quite exemplary of this resilience.
Is there sufficient ground, however, to argue for an anti-populist backlash in Europe? Are populists really losing momentum? I believe the answer here is all but straightforward and claims that populism is scaling back must be handled with much care.
The Italian case stands out here as one of the most insightful cases in point. Felt long abandoned dealing with unfettered migration flows and extremely discouraging economic prospects alone, Italians turned their backs on Europe en masse. Italy has witnessed one of the steepest decline in support of the EU to date, something so profound that it shook the country’s political system from top to bottom during the last general elections in March 2018 and led to installing for the first time an openly Eurosceptic Government in Rome that threatened to destabilise the whole continent. However, in light of the spectacular rise and fall of Mr Salvini – former Italian Minister of Interior and leader of the far-right League (see Textbox 1) recent developments in Italian politics seem also to confirm that the tide is shifting away from populists’ fortune. Tellingly, writing in the Financial times, Wolfgang Munchau went as far as to suggest for UK opposition parties to imitate an Italian-style coalition to stop Brexit.
Nonetheless, the Italian ‘ribaltone’ (which stands for Government turnaround in local jargon) shows that optimism is unduly overstated with risks entirely ignored.
As Interior Minister under the former “Government of Change”- a bizarre coalition teaming up his far-right party as junior partner with the anti-establishment Five Stars Movement (see Textbox 2)-, Mr Salvini made a name for himself rising within less than a year to becoming the most popular political leader at home and as reference point for nationalists and populists abroad. Mr Salvini’s political success was put on full display during the European Elections in May. Where, by almost doubling its share of votes from last year general election, his party topped the polls with an astounding (and unprecedented) 34%, leaving the Five Star Movement far behind with the latter securing a meagre 17%. The already fragile governing coalition was put severely under stress. The internal power balance reversed in the favour of the League filled its leader with hopes to impose a tighter grip on an already right-leaning agenda. Although Mr Salvini was already acting as a de facto Prime Minister, now he wanted to become an actual one. In other words, Mr Salvini had been already exerting a much broader political influence than what his ministerial competencies entailed. For instance, not only has he regularly ‘stepped on’ other Ministries’ dossiers, but managed to also dictate the day-to-day agenda of the Government by adopting an aggressive communication strategy.
Thinking that time has come to capitalise on shifts in the ballot boxes, in mid-August 2019, the League leader suddenly called a motion of no-confidence against PM Conte. In order to succeed in bringing the Government down, such a motion must be supported by a significant majority of MPs. It is then up to the President whether to seek another alternative for a functioning majority in the chamber or call snap elections.
However, by asking the Italian electorate to hand him ‘full powers’ (a disturbing reference to the Fascist Era under Mr Mussolini), Mr Salvini proved to be overly anxious to cash in on his popularity. As a result of his hubris, the opposition center-left Democratic Party (Partito Democratico) and the ‘arch enemy’ Five Stars Movement unpredictably joined forces in a traditional Italian style ‘ribaltone’. Thus, Mr Salvini’s no-confidence motion never made it to the chambers, as PM Conte – a former lawyer and Five Stars Movement member, who had nonetheless built for himself a much more institutional and independent profile - resigned while already holding a new pro-European coalition ticket with the PD in his pocket. Instead of marching comfortably to the ballot boxes, Mr Salvini found himself toppled by the Government in less than a month time.
EU partners and international markets widely welcomed the turnaround. Had Salvini joined the EU Council as a powerful PM, the Union could not have avoided another political row at times of extraordinary power-transfers and with Brexit looming on the horizon. An escalation between Rome and Brussels would have raised the stakes on at least two Commission priorities. First, on the issue of the country’s debt sustainability, whereby a significant break-away from responsible fiscal policies had the potential to drag the Euro economy into real troubles. And second, on the major question concerning migration management at the EU’s southern border to the Mediterranean, given that any ambitious reforms of the system would have been prostrated by Italian authorities promoting a nationalist and isolationist agenda.
A new reconciled cordiality between Rome and Brussels is already proving fruitful for Italy that had long felt isolated dealing with its own problems. In a clear sign of good faith, the new EU Commission President Von der Leyen summoned Mr Gentiloni (a former PM and Foreign Minister for the Democratic Party) to take the highly controversial post of Commissioner for Economic Affairs. In addition, by signing a voluntary agreement on asylum-seekers along with other 3 Interior Ministers (Germany, France and Malta) in Malta, the new ‘GialloRosso’ (referring to yellow and red: the two parties’ colours) Italian Government seemed to have already found a new spirit of understanding and solidarity among EU partners.
Nevertheless, the Italian parliamentary gamble comes with some risks attached. Whereas the PD and the Five Stars Movement deserve genuine praise for hijacking Mr Salvini’s bravado, I still doubt their patchy coalition will be up to the task of leading the country through a series of reforms that are long overdue. Such as, among others, that of curbing the country’s massive debt, diverting current expenditures in order to fund training schemes tackling youth unemployment and investments in education – especially at the University level –, lowering the tax wedge radically for both employers and employees, and lastly, curtailing and streamlining the inefficient state bureaucracy. If the new budgetary bill was the first real test gauging the Government’s ambitions in this regard, it contains very little essence to be hopeful about. What is more, as one of the first flagship initiatives of the new Government, Parliament passed a constitutional bill that reduces the number of MPs from 945 to 600. Yet, by failing to annex any legislative provisions apt to alter the symmetrical bicameralism, this proposal amounts to nothing but window-dressing as it certainly does not serve the purpose of fixing the country’s obsolete constitutional system.
Secondly, as a result of the parliamentary turnaround, the country’s political system is undergoing a new phase of radical transformation the long-term impact of which is hard to determine yet. As a matter of fact, a prominent figure like Mr Renzi (former PM and once leader of the PD), who has been the true ‘kingmaker’ of the new Government, eventually quit the party in order to set sails with his new ‘ItaliaViva’ movement, a political enterprise much along the lines of Mr Macron’s Republique on Marche. Though Mr Renzi did not withdraw his decisive support for PM Conte – given that he controls something around 40 MPs in both chambers -, his move has nonetheless left many progressive lawmakers in the Government disoriented as many suspect he will use his veto-power for his own advantage. Regardless of Mr Renzi’s own political ambitions, his strategy is founded on the conviction that the alliance between the PD and the Five Stars Movement should have been temporary and politically limited to contain Mr Salvini’s power-grab. He believes – not without justification – that under a systemic affiliation among the two parties the PD would otherwise give in its reformist and progressive nature to the populist rhetoric of the Five Stars Movement. However, in what is thought to be a rehearsal for a nation-wide effort to combine forces in preparation to the next general elections, the PD and the Five Stars Movement decided instead to run on a single ticket in the upcoming regional elections in Umbria at the end of October.
While it is still too early to assess in full the magnitude of this reconfiguration – polls remain in fact surprisingly stable signalling little to no shift in the attitudes of the electorate – the current hyper-fragmentation of parties does not bode well with the Government’s imperative to speed up its reform agenda. In light of this, if rumours have it right that the Government might seek to change the electoral law under a pure proportional system – which hampers Mr Salvini’s chance to eventually secure an outright majority – this is much likely to produce even more fragmentation as veto-players will likely mushroom seeking personal, local and sectorial political rewards. Instead of countering populism, the new Government might conversely deepen its structural influence further down on the Italian political system. Without a consistent effort of discontinuity at the domestic level and an energetic diplomatic strategy on the European stage, Mr Salvini would have it easy to target the new Government as a dull continuation of the status quo. After all, the League still remains the most popular political party by a wide margin.
Lastly, that of clinging too much on a fresh start from the new Commission might be also a terrible blunder on the part of Italian authorities. Whereas the nomination of Mrs Von der Leyen as Commission President was met with some optimism among Europhile circles, the recent controversy over the newly established ‘Protecting Europe's way of life’ portfolio and the skirmishes erupted over the hearings of new Commissioners in the EP suggest us to take a more cautious line. Von der Leyen has a difficult task ahead. Not only will her legitimacy vis-à-vis Parliament be a recurring issue of her tenure – since it was her surprising appointment to nip the Spitzenkanditaten system in the bud –, but she will also have to demonstrate exceptional political skills in order to navigate safely through a wafer-thin equilibrium between the EP, the Council and EU capitals.
To conclude, populism is not waning away. The fact that it is facing setbacks while getting closer to power does not necessarily mean it is not eroding our democratic politics already. Should traditional parties fail to offer a competitive and convincing alternative to the populists on how to reform the status quo, they might had just bought some time before populists will eventually enter through the gate of powers.
Antonio Astolfi is an intern at the Centre for European Research.