The coalition formed by Fratelli d'Italia, Matteo Salvini's other far-right formation, the League, and Silvio Berlusconi's conservative party, Forza Italia, would win up to 47 % of the vote. With the complex interplay of the electoral system, it should secure an absolute majority of seats in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. If these results were confirmed, FdI and the League would together win "the highest percentage of votes ever recorded by far-right parties in the history of Western Europe from 1945 to the present day".According to the Italian Centre for Electoral Studies (CISE).
This earthquake comes two weeks after the victory in Sweden of a conservative bloc including the Sweden Democrats (SD), a party with its roots in the neo-Nazi movement, which made a strong breakthrough, becoming the leading right-wing party in the Nordic country. SD and FdI are part of the same group in the European Parliament. In what was (badly) perceived in Rome as a warning without cost, the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen recalled that the European Union (EU) has "instruments to sanction Member States that undermine the rule of law and its common values.
Pitfalls
Giorgia Meloni has warned Brussels that she will demand a review of the terms of Italy's relationship with the EU: "The party's over, Italy will start defending its national interests".she warned. In particular, she is calling for a reform of the Stability Pact and the renegotiation, to take account of inflation, of the colossal aid package of 190 billion euros granted by her European partners to the eurozone's third-largest economy to help it recover from the pandemic.
Europeans are also alarmed by the positions on social issues of "la Meloni", as she is known in Italy, whose motto is "God, family, country", and who is close to the ultraconservative Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Fratelli d'Italia owes its success as much to the unfulfilled promises of its opponents and the wind of "disengagement" blowing across the Peninsula as to the charisma of its leader. This 45-year-old woman from Rome, who as a young activist said she admired Mussolini, has succeeded in de-demonising her image and rallying around her name the fears and anger of millions of Italians faced with soaring prices, unemployment, the threat of recession and poor public services.
Whichever Italian government emerges from the elections, which will not take office until the end of October at the earliest, its path already appears to be strewn with pitfalls and with little room for manoeuvre. In particular, it will have to manage the crisis caused by galloping inflation, while Italy is already crumbling under a debt representing 150 % of GDP, the highest ratio in the eurozone after Greece. On the issue of Ukraine, Europe and Italy's allies, as a member of NATO, will also be scrutinising the distribution of portfolios between the three parties. While Giorgia Meloni is an Atlanticist and supports sanctions against Moscow, Matteo Salvini is opposed to them.
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