Italy plunges into uncertainty after Giorgia Meloni’s victory

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Italy has a public debt of 150% of its GDP, inflation is running in the country at more than 9% and energy bills are causing problems for millions of people

A period of uncertainty begins today in Italy and the European Unionthe day after her victory in the parliamentary elections Georgia Meloni, head of a right/far-right coalition that will have to face significant challenges.

With an absolute majority in parliament, the head of the post-fascist Brotherhood of Italy party and allies of the anti-immigrant League’s Matteo Salvini and Silvio Berlusconi of the right-wing Forza Italia party will attempt to form a government in the coming days.

The slow counting of the ballots this morning confirmed the clear lead of Meloni, who gathers more than 26% of the votes. Her party is now the country’s first political formation, ahead of Enrico Letta’s centre-left Democratic Party (PD) which gathers 19%.

Together with Lega and Forza Italia, it will have an absolute majority in the House and the Senate.

In her first and brief statement after the vote, Giorgia Meloni sought to reassure people, both in Italy and abroad, where French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne warned that France would monitor “carefully” the “respect” of the human rights and the right to abortion.

“We will rule for all” of them Italians, Georgia Meloni promised. “We will govern with the aim of uniting the people.”

The right-wing press is enthusiastic today. “Revolution at the polls”, is the headline of Il Giornale, the newspaper of the Berlusconi family, while Libero states: “The left has been defeated, (we are) free!!!”.

“Meloni takes Italy”, writes the left-wing newspaper La Repubblica, which directly opposed Giorgia Meloni during the election campaign. La Stampa lists “the thousand uncertainties” facing Italy after the “historic victory” of the far right.

“The fact that this is happening a month before the centenary of the March on Rome and the start of 20 years of Mussolini’s dictatorship is a coincidence: the Italians who voted for Meloni did not do so out of nostalgia for fascism,” but the common ground between the fascist dictator and Meloni is that they both rose to power “after a lonely marathon against everyone”, the Turin newspaper analysed.

Economic challenges

The new government will succeed the government of national unity led by January 2021 Mario Draghithe former head of the European Central Bank, who was called to head the eurozone’s third largest economy brought to its knees by the pandemic.

Draghi had negotiated with Brussels almost 200 billion euros in economic aid to Italy in exchange for deep economic and institutional reforms, a windfall that represents the lion’s share of the European recovery plan.

Despite the stakes, parties that had agreed to participate in his government (the Brothers of Italy had remained in opposition) ended up ousting him in the summer for purely electoral reasons, bringing about the announcement of early parliamentary elections.

And while “Super Mario”, who had been presented as the savior of the eurozone during the 2008 financial crisis, appeared as a guarantee of credibility in the eyes of his European partners, the rise to power of the nationalist and Eurosceptic far-right is raising fears of a new period of instability. .

Especially since Italy has a public debt amounting to 150% of its GDP, inflation is running in the country at more than 9% and gas and electricity bills are causing problems for millions of people.

The Milan Stock Exchange was up this morning as the far-right victory was largely predicted by the markets. On Friday the Italian stock market had fallen 3.36%, the biggest among the major European stock markets.

An indication of persistent investor concerns about Italy’s debt is the fact that the spread, the difference in interest rates between the ten-year German bond and the ten-year Italian bond, rose to 235 points today, marking an increase of 6.68% .

RES-EMP

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