“It fills my stomach.” Mario Draghi recently confided this to Italian MEP Antonio Tajani. It emerged on Thursday, when Draghi tendered his resignation after a deep government crisis caused by the Five Star Movement.
Although Italian President Sergio Mattarella has refused this resignation, the uncertainty is enormous. The crisis comes at the worst possible time. Italy is grappling with high energy prices and inflation, and a state of emergency was declared in the north just last week amid ongoing heat and drought.
Also read: Italian Prime Minister Draghi offers to resign, government in deep crisis
Europe is also concerned about instability in Italy, the third largest economy in the eurozone. The crisis immediately caused unrest in the financial markets on Thursday.
Mario Draghi, the former president of the European Central Bank, has been regarded as one of the most authoritative heads of government in Europe in recent months. He was in daily contact with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and played a major diplomatic role in the war between Ukraine and Russia. In recent months, he has rapidly reduced Italy’s strong dependence on Russian gas. At the same time, he scrupulously respected the European deadlines for the reforms that have been made conditional on the subsidies and loans from the European post-corona recovery fund. Italy can lay claim to 205 billion euros in the coming years.
Great uncertainty
Italy is now facing a summer of great uncertainty. The crisis became official on Thursday afternoon, when the coalition partner Five Star Movement in the Senate walked out on a confidence vote linked to a €26 billion bailout package for Italian businesses and families. Draghi’s government survived the vote without the Five Star Movement, but the prime minister spoke of an “important political fact”. He concluded that the idea of a government of national unity was completely gone. This is a breach of trust, he says. With the exception of the post-fascist Brothers of Italy, all major parties took part in Draghi’s cabinet last February.
Since then, a lot of water has flowed through the Tiber. Formally, the Five Star Movement opposed the Italian government’s new aid package because it offered the mayor of Rome the opportunity to build a new, major waste-to-energy plant. The Five Star Movement, which ruled Rome until October, wants nothing to do with it.
In fact, this was just the ‘casus belli’ and the battle for the voter plays a much bigger role. Since the monster win in the 2018 elections (32 percent of the vote), the Five Star Movement, which recently saw former figurehead Luigi Di Maio leave, has almost halved in the polls. According to the radical flank of the Five Stars, which is putting party leader Giuseppe Conte under considerable pressure, now is the time to chart its own course, by waging strong opposition for a few more months.
The radical right-wing Salvini, always in campaign mode, also wants to win votes in the run-up to new elections. His rival Giorgia Meloni of the far right Brothers of Italy, after all, surpasses him in the polls.
What now? President Mattarella refused to accept Draghi’s resignation and sent him back to parliament. There will be a debate on Wednesday. It is not yet clear whether a new confidence vote will follow. The center-left Democratic Party hopes for a relaunch of the cabinet, but Salvini and Meloni are already smelling the ballot box.
Thus, at a time when citizens and businesses are already moaning, Italian politicians are pushing the country into chaos. The Italian business association Confindustria said in a response that it was “speechless” because of such “irresponsible behavior”. European Commissioner for Economy Paolo Gentiloni – himself a former Italian prime minister – said he was following the political crisis in Italy “with concerned amazement”.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of 15 July 2022
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