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Italy’s Five Star Movement votes whether to ditch leader Luigi Di Maio

Italy's anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) will vote Thursday on whether to ditch leader Luigi Di Maio after the party's flop at European elections, the deputy prime minister said.

Published: 29 May 2019 12:36 CEST
Updated: 30 May 2019 09:21 CEST
Italy's Five Star Movement votes whether to ditch leader Luigi Di Maio
Head of the Five Star Movement (M5S) and Italy's Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio. Photo: Alberto Pizzoli/AFP

The M5S rules in coalition with Matteo Salvini's nationalist League, which won a resounding victory in Italy on the back of an “Italians First” campaign,  dealing a blow to the Movement and threatening the stability of the government.

“You decide. I am asking to put my role as party leader to the vote,” Di  Maio said on the M5S blog on Wednesday. “If the Movement renews its faith in me, we'll get to work… with even more commitment and dedication,” he added. 

The vote on whether he should stay on will take place on the M5S online platform on Thursday.

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The EU vote results confirmed the reversal of fortunes of the ruling parties, with M5S — which pocketed 32.5 percent at the general election — taking home just 17 percent on Sunday compared to the League's 34 percent.

“I had promised to get the Movement into government… and we did. I never gave any less than 100 percent,” Di Maio said.

“I would never have thought working hard would be a fault,” he added, in an apparent reference to Salvini, who famously spent fewer than 20 days in his office between the start of the year and the vote as he toured the country campaigning.

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The M5S chief has been criticised by part of the Movement's base for taking on too much with his three roles as party head, deputy prime minister and economic development, labour and social policies minister. 

Di Maio has blamed the M5S's poor performance on low voter turnout, as well as a mud-slinging campaign by the League against which it was slow to retaliate.

He received a show of support Wednesday from comedian Beppe Grillo, the M5S co-founder, who remains an influential figure within the Movement despite withdrawing from the political scene to focus on his stand-up career.

A new direction for Italy's Five Star Movement? Beppe Grillo distances himself from the party he founded
Beppe Grillo (L) and the party's new leader Luigi Di Maio with the Five Star Movement's new logo. Photo: Andreas Solaro/AFP

“The Movement has suffered a defeat and must react,” he admitted on his website. However, he said he was “wounded” by those M5S members who were acting “as if it were a drop in the sales of a multinational company”.

“Luigi has not committed any crime, he is not involved in any scandal. He must carry on the fight,” Grillo said. 

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MIGRANT CRISIS

‘We hoped for better’: How Italy’s government has floundered on migration

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has admitted she had hoped to do "better" on controlling irregular migration, which has surged since her party won historic elections a year ago.

Published: 25 September 2023 11:46 CEST
‘We hoped for better’: How Italy’s government has floundered on migration

Having come to power on pledges to curb mass migration, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy party has since enacted a series of policies which have not stopped a soaring number of sea arrivals in 2023.

“Clearly we hoped for better on immigration, where we worked so hard,” she said in an interview marking the win, broadcast late Saturday on the TG1 channel.

“The results are not what we hoped to see. It is certainly a very complex problem, but I’m sure we’ll get to the bottom of it.”

Meloni’s post-fascist Brothers of Italy party was elected in large part on a promise to reduce mass migration into Italy.

But the number of people arriving on boats from North Africa has instead surged, with more than 130,000 recorded by the interior ministry so far this year – up from 70,000 in the same period of 2022.

EXPLAINED: What’s behind Italy’s soaring number of migrant arrivals?

After 8,500 people arrived on the tiny island of Lampedusa in just three days earlier this month, Meloni demanded the European Union do more to help relieve the pressure.

Brussels agreed to intensify existing efforts, and this week said it would start to release money to Tunisia – from where many of the boats leave – under a pact aimed at stemming irregular migration from the country.

Blaming Germany

But Meloni’s main coalition partner, Matteo Salvini of the anti-immigration League party, has been dismissive of EU efforts to manage the surge of arrivals that he dubbed an “act of war”.

The League this weekend also condemned Germany for funding an NGO conducting at-sea rescues in the Mediterranean, saying it represented “very serious interference” in Italian affairs.

Defence Minister Guido Crosetto, a member of Meloni’s party, weighed in on Sunday, telling La Stampa newspaper the move put Italy “in difficulty”.

“If Germany cared about the fate of people in difficulty and really wanted to help us save lives, they could help… (with plans) to seriously combat criminals who traffic people,” he added in a statement on Sunday evening.

IN NUMBERS: Five graphs to understand migration to Italy

Several charity rescue ships operate in the Central Mediterranean, the world’s deadliest sea crossing for migrants, although they only pick up around five percent of arrivals to Italy, according to Crosetto.

The German foreign office confirmed it was providing between 400,000 euros and 800,000 euros each to two projects, “for the support on land in Italy of people rescued at sea and an NGO project for sea-rescue operations”.

People gather outside the migrant reception centre on Lampedusa, south of Sicily, on August 14th 2023. The island has recently struggled to cope with a large number of sea arrivals.

People gather outside the migrant reception centre on Lampedusa, south of Sicily, on August 14th 2023. The island has recently struggled to cope with a large number of sea arrivals. Photo by Alessandro Serranò / AFP

‘Protection money’

While interior minister in a previous government in 2019, Salvini blocked several charity ships from disembarking rescued migrants in Italy, a move that saw him prosecuted in Sicily on charges of kidnapping.

Since taking office in October, Meloni’s government has restricted the activities of the ships, which it accuses of encouraging migrants, while vowing to clamp down on people smugglers.

In April, weeks after more than 90 migrants died in a shipwreck near the town of Cutro on the coast of Calabria, it declared a six-month migration ‘state of emergency’, allocating 5 million euros to address the situation.

This was followed in May by the passage of the Cutro decree, which all but eliminated Italy’s special protection status for certain categories of asylum seekers and introduced harsher sentences for traffickers.

Agriculture Minister Francesco Lollobrigida sparked controversy at the time by saying Italy was facing “ethnic substitution” as a result of migration – comments opposition leader Elly Schlein dismissed as “disgusting” and as having “the flavour of white supremacism”.

Most recently, the government has sought to boost repatriation of arrivals ineligible for asylum, including by building new detention centres and extending the time migrants can be held there.

It emerged this week it would also be requiring migrants awaiting a decision on asylum to pay a deposit of 5,000 euros or be sent to a detention centre, prompting accusations the state was charging “protection money”.

The move was an “inhuman” gesture that unfairly targets “those fleeing famine and war,” parliamentarian Riccardo Magi of the +Europa party told reporters.

The centre-left Democratic Party said earlier this week that “on immigration, the Italian right has failed”.

“It continues on a path that is demagogic and consciously cynical, but above all totally ineffective both in the respect and safeguarding of human rights, and for the protection of Italy’s interests,” it said in a note.

The criticism of Germany comes after Berlin temporarily stopped accepting migrants living in Italy, after Rome itself suspended EU rules governing the distribution of migrants.

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