Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

POLITICS

Italy might hold new elections in July

Italy could go back to the polls in two months' time after yet another round of talks failed to produce a working government.

Published: 7 May 2018 16:03 CEST
Italy might hold new elections in July
Matteo Salvini of the League with his coalition partners at the presidential palace after Italy's latest round of unsuccessful talks. Photo: Tiziana Fabi/AFP

The Five Star Movement (M5S), Italy's single biggest party, and the League, which leads a right-wing coalition that together got the largest share of the ballot in March's general election, have suggested calling another vote as soon as July 8th.

Speaking after talks with Italian President Sergio Mattarella on Monday, the leaders of both parties ruled out the possibility of putting a caretaker cabinet in charge to deal with Italy's most pressing matters of government, including passing the next budget.

The League's Matteo Salvini, who met the Five Star leader Luigi Di Maio as part of the consultations, said that the two had agreed upon the first Sunday in July as a date for possible elections. A summer vote would be unprecedented in Italy, where elections usually take place no later than June.

Di Maio, who like Salvini said he opposed a “president's government” of technocrats picked by the head of state, said that a second vote would effectively be “a run-off” between the M5S and the right-wing alliance.

“It's clear that there are two political realities competing to run the country and Italians will choose,” he said.

READ ALSO:


Luigi Di Maio speaks to the press after Monday's meetings. Photo: Tiziana Fabi/AFP

The League's alliance topped the March 4th polls with 37 percent of the vote, while the anti-establishment M5S became Italy's largest single party with almost 33 percent.

Neither group has the numbers to form a majority government and both have been tussling for power since the election.

Di Maio has offered to forgo the prime minister's office in order to make a deal with the League, but insists that his party will not work with Salvini's coalition partner, former PM Silvio Berlusconi, who the M5S has vehemently opposed ever since it was founded. 

Salvini continued to insist on Monday that he would not drop Berlusconi or his Forza Italia party, and proposed instead that the president allow him and his partners on the right to form a minority government.   

But press reports suggest Mattarella would be unlikely to do so without guarantees a working majority could be reached. He is said to be looking for a neutral but competent figure to head a caretaker cabinet, though so far only the Democratic Party, whose share of the vote fell to just 19 percent in the last vote, has said it would support such a government.

Mattarella will continue meeting Italy's smaller parties throughout Monday. 

Meanwhile pollster Lorenzo Pregliasco said voter surveys suggested new elections would not change the balance of forces: “No one will win a majority.” 

READ ALSO: The Local's introductory guide to Italian politics

EUROPEAN UNION

Italian PM Meloni to stand in EU Parliament elections

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on Sunday she would stand in upcoming European Parliament elections, a move apparently calculated to boost her far-right party, although she would be forced to resign immediately.

Published: 28 April 2024 15:54 CEST
Italian PM Meloni to stand in EU Parliament elections

Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, which has neo-Fascist roots, came top in Italy’s 2022 general election with 26 percent of the vote.

It is polling at similar levels ahead of the European elections on from June 6-9.

With Meloni heading the list of candidates, Brothers of Italy could exploit its national popularity at the EU level, even though EU rules require that any winner already holding a ministerial position must immediately resign from the EU assembly.

“We want to do in Europe exactly what we did in Italy on September 25, 2022 — creating a majority that brings together the forces of the right to finally send the left into opposition, even in Europe!” Meloni told a party event in the Adriatic city of Pescara.

In a fiery, sweeping speech touching briefly on issues from surrogacy and Ramadan to artificial meat, Meloni extolled her coalition government’s one-and-a-half years in power and what she said were its efforts to combat illegal immigration, protect families and defend Christian values.

After speaking for over an hour in the combative tone reminiscent of her election campaigns, Meloni said she had decided to run for a seat in the European Parliament.

READ ALSO: How much control does Giorgia Meloni’s government have over Italian media?

“I’m doing it because I want to ask Italians if they are satisfied with the work we are doing in Italy and that we’re doing in Europe,” she said, suggesting that only she could unite Europe’s conservatives.

“I’m doing it because in addition to being president of Brothers of Italy I’m also the leader of the European conservatives who want to have a decisive role in changing the course of European politics,” she added.

In her rise to power, Meloni, as head of Brothers of Italy, often railed against the European Union, “LGBT lobbies” and what she has called the politically correct rhetoric of the left, appealing to many voters with her straight talk.

“I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am a Christian” she famously declared at a 2019 rally.

She used a similar tone Sunday, instructing voters to simply write “Giorgia” on their ballots.

“I have always been, I am, and will always be proud of being an ordinary person,” she shouted.

EU rules require that “newly elected MEP credentials undergo verification to ascertain that they do not hold an office that is incompatible with being a Member of the European Parliament,” including being a government minister.

READ ALSO: Why is Italy’s government being accused of helping tax dodgers?

The strategy has been used before, most recently in Italy in 2019 by Meloni’s deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, who leads the far-right Lega party.

The EU Parliament elections do not provide for alliances within Italy’s parties, meaning that Brothers of Italy will be in direct competition with its coalition partners Lega and Forza Italia, founded by Silvio Berlusconi.

The Lega and Forza Italia are polling at about seven percent and eight percent, respectively.

SHOW COMMENTS