South Tyrolean People's Party forms five-party alliance with right-wing parties

Dhe new government is in place in the northern Italian province of South Tyrol. In his third term in office, Governor Arno Kompatscher of the Christian Democratic South Tyrolean People's Party (SVP), who has been in office since 2014, will lead a coalition with right-wing parties from both the Italian and German language groups. The future five-party alliance in Bolzano includes the right-wing conservative Brothers of Italy party led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, the right-wing national Lega led by Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini and the conservative alliance La Civica as well as the Freedom Party, which is closely linked to the right-wing populist Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ). The members of the government should be named by the beginning of next week. The swearing-in ceremony is scheduled for January 16th.

In the elections on October 22nd, the collective SVP party, which has ruled the autonomous province uninterruptedly since the first free elections in the Republic of Italy in 1948, once again suffered significant losses of votes and had to look for a coalition partner from the German language group for the first time. The participation of a government partner from the Italian language group is mandatory according to the Statute of Autonomy.

The new government alliance will have 19 of the 35 mandates in the Bolzano state parliament and thus a stable majority. The cabinet will be enlarged from eight to eleven state councilors (ministers) because all coalition partners have claimed a government position.

Warnings of a “pact with the devil”

The coalition negotiations were accompanied by numerous protests from opposition parties and various social groups. In some places there was talk of a “pact with the devil” that Kompatscher and the SVP would enter into with the right-wing parties of the two language groups. The SVP had already governed together with the Lega in the last legislative period, and now Prime Minister Meloni's party, which is currently dominant in Italy, is also joining the party. In Austria, cooperation between the FPÖ and the Christian Democratic People's Party ÖVP has been common practice for many years at the federal level and in several federal states; South Tyrol is now also following this example.

Kompatscher rejected the opposition's protests and criticism from some media as politically motivated alarmism and assured that the SVP would continue to guarantee a centrist and balanced policy in the future and continue to work to expand the province's autonomy rights. The inclusion of the parties ruling in Rome in the coalition in Bolzano is a guarantee that the autonomy rights, which have been reduced in recent years due to decisions of the Supreme Court in Rome, will be fully raised back to the 1992 standard. Both Meloni and the minister responsible for the regions, Roberto Calderoli (Lega), assured him of this, said Kompatscher.

The formation of the coalition government in Bolzano not only has a signal effect in Rome, because Meloni's party has now secured significant influence in the autonomous province and can prove itself as a partner for the Europe-friendly SVP, but also with a view to the European elections in June. At her press conference on Thursday in Rome, Meloni stated the goal of achieving a conservative majority in Strasbourg (and Brussels) that would no longer be dependent on parliamentary cooperation with the Social Democrats.

The head of the Christian Democratic European People's Party (EPP), Manfred Weber (CSU), is also aiming for such a right-of-center majority. The SVP's cooperation in Bolzano with several parties that are beyond the political “firewall” from the perspective of Berlin, for example, is likely to rekindle the debate in Germany about the Union's cooperation with other right-wing parties outside the EPP alliance. EPP leader Weber sets three conditions for such cooperation: The parties would have to clearly commit to the EU, stand with Ukraine in Russia's war of aggression and not question the rule of law. Weber is convinced that Meloni's party, which belongs to the right-wing conservative alliance of European Conservatives and Reformers (ECR), meets these criteria.