Governmental change in 2019 Italy: domestic factors or European constraints?

ABSTRACT

The Italian experience of 2019 has a general importance. Within a month (August 2019), Italy moved from being governed by an anti-EU government to a pro-EU government. A parliamentary change in the party composition of the government took place, although the new government continued to be supported by the same plurality party and led by the same prime minister. How to interpret the rise and fall of the Italian anti-EU government? Although domestic actors’ and parties’ calculations played an intervening role in deciding governmental change, nevertheless those calculations were made on the basis of a structure of constraints on the Italian government caused by the country’s participation in the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Notwithstanding that the 2020 pandemic has led to a suspension of those interdependence constraints, the 2019 Italian experience indicates the limits that cannot be overcome by governments operating within that interdependence.

KEYWORDS:

• EU
• interdependence
• Italian democracy
• Economic And Monetary Union
• budgetary policy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The Draghi government that substituted the Conte II government in February 2021 reinforced the latter’s pro-EU path, moreover with a larger support in the Italian Parliament. Indeed, the governmental change was due to the necessity of strengthening the capability of the country to get and to manage the funds of the new program for dealing with the pandemic’s social and economic consequences (Next Generation EU).

2. The EU is based on two Treaties (the Treaty on the European Union or TEU and the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU or TFEU) plus the Charter of Rights. The EMU is a specific policy regime within the EU, to which participate 19 out of the 27 EU member states. I will discuss the features of EMU in the express section of the article.

3. As reported by Serricchio (2018), according to an ITANES 2018 poll, ‘support for European Union and membership of EMU are separated’ in the preferences of the Italian citizens interviewed. Indeed, 19,7% of the respondents considered a ‘bad thing’ the European Union while 32,5% considered the EMU to be a ‘bad thing’.

4. See, Programma del Movimento Cinque Stelle per le elezioni 2018, see the part dedicated to foreign relations (particularly, point 3 and 5, http://www.cervia5stelle.it/2017/12/19/il-programma-esteri-del-movimento-5-stelle/)t

5. See, Salvini premier: programmma di governo. La rivoluzione del buon senso, 2018, www.salvinipremier.it

6. The Dublin Convention was signed in 1990, entered into force in 1997, became the Dublin Regulation in 2003, and was revised several times subsequently, but it has continued to affirm the principle that the country of first arrival of migrants will have to take care of them.

7. As in private law, the government was said to be based on a ‘contract’ between the two parties (https://download.repubblica.it/pdf/2018/politica/contratto_governo.pdf).

8. Under Article 17 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU), the European Council acting by a qualified majority proposes to the European Parliament (EP) a candidate for President of the European Commission. The choice of candidate must take the result of the EP elections into account. The EP elects the proposed candidate by a majority of its members. If a majority is not obtained, the European Council must propose a new candidate within 1 month. In the 2014 EP elections, the main parliamentary parties adopted the so-called sptizenkandidat’s logic, according to which the front runner of the plurality has to be proposed and thus elected as Commission’s president. After the 2019 EP’s elections, however, the national governmental leaders operating through the European Council disavowed the spitzenkandidat’s logic that was accepted after the EP’s elections of 2014. This time, the spitzenkandidat of the plurality party (Manfred Weber of the European People Party) was not accepted for the role of Commission’s president by the European Council that instead advanced the alternative candidature of Ursula von der Leyen. The European Council’s choice led to a diffuse malaise in the pro-EU parties of the EP, to the point that Ursula von der Leyen was elected, on 16 July 2020, with only 383 votes (out of the 747 MEPs), being 374 votes the majority’s threshold. Thus, the favorable vote of the 5SM 14MEPs was crucial for electing Ursula von der Leyen.

9. It is worthwhile to remind, moreover, that the basic income’s program was only one of the 20 publicized new policy programs that 5SM promised to introduce as soon as it enters the government (see, https://dait.interno.gov.it/documenti/trasparenza/politiche2018/Doc/4/4_Prog_Elettorale.pdf).

10. Although that independence was dramatically called into question by the German Constitutional Court in the judgment of the Second Senate of 5 May 2020, http://www.astrid-online.it/static/upload/protected/bver/bverg_05_05_20.pdf

11. Art. 126 TFEU establishes that, if a member state does not meet one or both criteria (deficit and debt), the Commission may prepare a report. After that, the ECOFIN Council, backed by the European Council, may decide to open an infringement procedure and, in the extreme case, impose fines of up to 0.2 of GDP.

12. ‘Is Europe making threats? I don’t care’, said Matteo Salvini during a Rome public meeting on 30 September 2018.