The reasons why Meloni will have to deal with Von der Leyen

The leader of the extreme right, Giorgia Meloni, habitually criticizes the “bureaucrats” in Brussels, but during the electoral campaign the most she came to say was that she wants to renegotiate the reform and investment plan Few in Brussels doubt that the relationship between the next Italian Government and the European Commission will have friction, fights, noise, off-color statements, but there are also few who believe that the fight will go beyond that noise or that the blood will reach the river. The Italian institutional counterweights and the tools at the disposal of the European Commission will soften the shock. The leader of the extreme right, Giorgia Meloni, habitually criticizes the “bureaucrats” in Brussels, but during the electoral campaign the most she came to say was that she wants to renegotiate the Italian reform and investment plan linked to the post-Europe European funds. pandemic. The first counterweights are Italian. The Italian institutional system gives the President of the Republic, elected by the chambers and not by popular vote, powers superior to counterparts with similar powers such as the German, Polish, Hungarian, Portuguese or Austrian. Sergio Matarella, a pro-European conservative, has been in office since September 2015 and saw his seven-year term renewed in January this year, so he will be in office, if he does not resign or die, until 2029. His powers are broad. He can, whenever he wants, dissolve the chambers and send the country back to the polls. He can also reject appointments of ministers. And although it is very unlikely that he will do so in portfolios that have basically national powers, Italian presidents do tend to do so if the head of government on duty proposes, for example, someone Europhobic for Economy. His predecessors and himself already used those powers. The other great obstacle to eventual fickleness of Meloni is the European and especially in its economic aspect. Italy has the second largest debt (calculated as a percentage of GDP, which is how debts are calculated, because otherwise Germany would have more than Greece) in the European Union after Greece. That 150% of debt over GDP exceeds 2.5 trillion euros. Without the support of the European Central Bank and its debt purchase programs, the Italian Treasury would have a morrocotudo problem. The latest debt purchase program, the one that works right now, is linked to several factors that Meloni will take care to comply with, especially compliance with the reform and investment plan linked to post-pandemic funds. Italy was, after Spain, the great beneficiary of these funds with 70,000 million in transfers and 140,000 in loans. Between 2021 and 2022 Mario Draghi managed to unlock 70,000 million in total. Those 140,000 million that remain to be disbursed will not be if the new Italian Government does not comply with the promised reforms and does not make the investments set. A third of these investments go to renewable energies, so as little as Meloni likes the fight against the climate crisis, almost 50,000 million euros are at stake in it. If the economic part, where the Italian bosses will press to avoid adventures, does not worry so much in Brussels, it does worry that Italy will drift towards a kind of “electoral autocracy”, as the European Parliament called Hungary in mid-September in a report in the which ensures that the country ceased to be a full democracy. In addition to the role of the Italian Constitutional Court (in Hungary or Poland all the highest state authorities are in the hands of the ruling party, a situation that does not occur in Italy), Brussels believes that it has sufficient leverage to respond. Last week in New York, von der Leyen said the European Commission has “tools” to deal with Meloni if ​​he goes “in a difficult direction.” The European Commission is “the guardian of the treaties”, according to those same treaties. And European treaties are above national laws. In Brussels there seem to be what could be called two schools of thought regarding the new Italian government. A minority of officials and diplomats, whom we can call “the pessimists”, consider that the coming to power of the post-fascist Brothers of Italy is a much greater democratic threat to the entire bloc than that of governments such as the Polish or Hungarian . Both because of Meloni’s background and because for the first time the European People’s Party supported one of its own (Berlusconi) being openly in coalition with the extreme right. There have been cases of collaboration between conservatives and the extreme right (the PP with VOX in Castilla y León, Madrid, Murcia or Andalusia, the Dutch liberals with Geert Wilders’ ultras or Berlusconi himself with Salvini). But the extreme of sharing a coalition, rallies and electoral propaganda had never been reached. In front of them, “the optimists” do not deny the danger of Meloni’s leadership but they see enough checks and balances to avoid incorrigible drifts. They understand that the next Italian government will put European funds at risk or cause the country’s role in the European Union or NATO to be questioned (Italy is home to most of the Fifth Fleet in the Mediterranean and has nuclear weapons depots Americans). Some diplomats, especially those from the north, also believe that Meloni is going to try to do, from the other side of the political spectrum, what the Greek Alexis Tsipras did with Syriza. When the Greek radical left came to power, one of Tsipras’s priorities was to eat up the political space to the left of center. He was successful and the Pasok is a shadow of its former self. Syriza is the opposition alternative right now to the New Democracy conservatives and Tsipras happened to be received at the pre-summit meetings between the Social Democratic leaders. Meloni, faced with the biological fact that one day he will reach Berlusconi and the collapse of Salvini, can attempt a turn to the center-right that will give him all the Italian conservative space.