Italy: what future for the country with Giorgia Meloni?

Who is the real Giorgia Meloni? The Italians will find out in 2023. The essential question is what the new President of the Council, who triumphed in the general elections in September, really believes in.

She is the head of a party, Fratelli d’Italia, whose origins date back to post-war neo-fascism. He dominates a right-wing alliance steeped in populism. Will she turn out to be the Trump-esque provocateur who offered an unequivocally American far-right inspired agenda in some speeches, especially when she was abroad? Or will she be the staunch but reasonable conservative who aligned herself with Italy’s partners in NATO over Ukraine, sought advice from her respected predecessor, Mario Draghi, and pleaded for management prudent public finances?

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But does what Giorgia Meloni think really matter? The constraints weighing on his government are so strong, some say, that he can only go in one direction, necessarily conventional. It will indeed depend on the good will of Brussels to pay to the new government the share of the post-pandemic recovery fund set up by the EU which must go to Italy, i.e. some 200 billion euros. And the Italian government will need the markets’ approval to avoid the kind of storm that devastated British finances in the fall. With all the other problems besetting her – inflation, the rising cost of living and a war on EU borders – Giorgia Meloni would be ill-advised to start a culture war, let alone the kind of restrictions on civil liberties observed in Hungary and Poland. Whether or not this view holds depends on a third question that we may know the answer to in 2023: how long will his government last? For thirty years, the average lifespan of an Italian government has been less than twenty months. However demented, mediocre or indifferent the figures at the top of the state may be, there is a limit to what can be accomplished in such a short period of time.

The character of the ephemeral

The new government has a priori all the characteristics of the ephemeral: Fratelli, the Northern League and the Forza Italia party are in open disagreement on a whole series of questions ranging from Russia to budgetary policy. But it is the first time that a coalition has held an absolute majority since the tidal wave that brought Berlusconi to power in 2001, and which allowed him to stay there for five years. If Giorgia Meloni proves capable of emulating her, then sooner or later she might feel free enough from the constraints to throw her pragmatism overboard – and try her hand at the kind of politics she sketched out in her most inflamed.

John Hooper, correspondent in Italy for The Economist