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Italy’s League opens the door to a deal with Five Stars

Right-wing leader Matteo Salvini on Wednesday offered the first signs of compromise in the battle for power following Italy's inconclusive March 4th election, revealing that he was ready to work with anyone to form a government – except the vanquished Democratic Party.

Published: 15 March 2018 09:21 CET
Updated: 15 March 2018 13:50 CET
Italy's League opens the door to a deal with Five Stars
Matteo Salvini (L) and Luigi Di Maio. Photos: Tiziana Fabi/AFP

Previously bullish Salvini, leader of the far-right League that heads the right-wing coalition which won the most votes in last week's election, told reporters he was the right's prime ministerial candidate but admitted that he “doesn't yearn to be premier at all costs”.

The 45-year-old also refused point blank to work with the ruling Democratic Party (PD), whose centre-left coalition slumped to third on less than 23 percent of the vote and with whom Salvini has frequently battled over immigration.

READ ALSO: Understanding the election result, and what happens next

“We will work in the coming weeks to find a majority, and what I can exclude is that the losers, the PD… could be part of this majority. We will talk about everything else in the next few weeks,” Salvini said.

That dismissal of the PD leaves the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S), the largest single party in Italy after picking up around 33 percent of the vote, as the only possible partner with whom the right could realistically form a government.

Salvini called M5S leader Luigi Di Maio on Wednesday evening, and told press the two had agreed on the need to discuss the Speakers of the two chambers of Italian parliament.

In his account of the call, published on the M5S blog on Thursday, Di Maio said he had told Salvini that the M5S would insist on choosing the speaker of the lower house. That appointment is separate from the formation of a government, he added.

The two leaders acknowledged each other's election success, Di Maio said, but have not scheduled a meeting – for now.

'Don't want chaos'

The League is also the only party with which the M5S can form a majority, as the PD have decided to stay in opposition and have repeatedly called on the M5S and the League to work towards a government of their own.

Di Maio immediately claimed victory in the aftermath of the election despite his party gaining fewer votes than Salvini's coalition. Speaking to the same international media on Tuesday he lamented the lack of proposals to have come the M5S's way from other political parties since the election.

He also said that he would not change his party's manifesto pledges nor accept a different ministerial team from the one he presented before the election.

Talking to Five Star Movement voters in neglected suburban Naples
Photo: Alberto Pizzoli/AFP

However on Wednesday 31-year-old Di Maio said to business group Confcommercio that he didn't “want to leave the country in chaos,” and that he thought he could help deliver a government quicker than the six months it took Germany to form the grand coalition that was sworn in on Wednesday.

Like Di Maio, Salvini wants any new government to be guided by the promises made during the campaign, which for the right includes a flat tax of 15 percent and the creation of “a less bureaucratic and more federal Italy”.

“I'll do everything that is humanly and democratically possible to respect the mandate given to me by the voters,” Salvini said. “If from this starting point there are other suggestions we're happy to listen to them.”

Russophile

Salvini said that he would not break with his coalition in order to form a government with the M5S, meaning that Di Maio would find himself negotiating with a four-party group that commands more seats than him and contains Silvio Berlusconi, who is hostile to the M5S.

“I opened the door just to kick them out,” Berlusconi said to reporters on Wednesday. That would inevitably lead to compromise over key policy issues and the team of ministers he presented before the election.

Salvini also outlined the Russophile, eurosceptic politics that were once characteristic of the M5S but have been rejected by Di Maio since he took the reigns of the party last year. He said that the euro “was, and is a mistake” and that sanctions against Russia were “a folly”.

READ ALSO:

Italy's stock market slides after uncertain election result
However he said that he would revise relations should “clear proof” emerge of Russia's involvement in the nerve gas poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the English city of Salisbury. Britain says Russia's involvement is “highly likely” and on Wednesday expelled 23 Russian diplomats.

“It's 2018. You can't go around poisoning people,” Salvini said. Salvini also alluded to the M5S's universal income proposal, which would guarantee 780 euros ($960) a month for the country's poorest, as being part of a “cultural difference” between the two political groups.

“We want to cultivate work while — at least by what I read — their proposals are based more on assistance than development,” he said. “But with the PD out of the way, anything is possible.”

By Terry Daley

POLITICS

Can foreign residents in Italy vote in the European elections?

The year 2024 is a bumper one for elections, among them the European elections in June. Italy is of course a member of the EU - so can foreign residents vote in the elections that will almost certainly affect their daily lives?

Published: 3 May 2024 15:25 CEST
Can foreign residents in Italy vote in the European elections?

Across Europe, people will go to the polls in early June to select their representatives in the European Parliament, with 76 seats up for grabs in Italy. 

Although European elections usually see a much lower turnout than national elections, they are still seen as important by Italian politicians.

Giorgia Meloni will stand as a candidate this year, hoping use her personal popularity to give her Brothers of Italy party a boost and build on her success in Italy to “send the left into opposition” at the European level too.

When to vote

Across Italy, polling takes place on Saturday 8th and Sunday 9th June 2024.

Polling stations will be set up in the same places as for national and local elections – usually town halls, leisure centres and other public buildings.

You have to vote at the polling station for the municipality in which you are registered as a resident, which should be indicated on your electoral card.

Polling stations open at 8am and mostly close at 6pm, although some stay open later.

Unlike in presidential or local elections, there is only a single round of voting in European elections.

Who can vote? 

Italian citizens – including dual nationals – can vote in European elections, even if they don’t live in Italy. As is common for Italian domestic elections, polling booths will be set up in Italian consulates around the world to allow Italians living overseas to vote.

Non-Italian citizens who are living in Italy can only vote if they have citizenship of an EU country. So for example Irish citizens living in Italy can vote in European elections but Americans, Canadians, Australians, etc. cannot.

Brits in Italy used to be able to vote before Brexit, but now cannot – even if they have the post-Brexit carta di soggiorno.

If you have previously voted in an election in Italy – either local or European – you should still be on the electoral roll.

If not, in order to vote you need to send an application more than 90 days before the election date.

How does the election work?

The system for European elections differs from most countries’ domestic polls. MEPs are elected once every five years.

Each country is given an allocation of MEPs roughly based on population size. At present there are 705 MEPs: Germany – the country in the bloc with the largest population – has the most while the smallest number belong to Malta with just six.

Italy, like most of its EU neighbours, elects its MEPs through direct proportional representation via the ‘list’ system, so that parties gain the number of MEPs equivalent to their share of the overall vote.

So, for example, if Meloni’s party won 50 percent of the vote they would get 38 out of the total of 76 Italian seats.

Exactly who gets to be an MEP is decided in advance by the parties who publish their candidate lists in priority order. So let’s say that Meloni’s party does get that 50 percent of the vote – then the people named from 1 to 38 on their list get to be MEPs, and the people lower down on the list do not, unless a candidate (for example, Meloni) declines the seat and passes it on to the next person on the list.

In the run up to the election, the parties decide on who will be their lead candidates and these people will almost certainly be elected (though Meloni would almost definitely not take up her seat as an MEP, as this would mean resigning from office in Italy).

The further down the list a name appears, the less likely that person is to be heading to parliament.

Once in parliament, parties usually seek to maximise their influence by joining one of the ‘blocks’ made up of parties from neighbouring countries that broadly share their interests and values eg centre-left, far-right, green.

The parliament alternates between Strasbourg and Brussels. 

Find out more about voting in the European elections from Italy on the European Parliament’s website or the Italian interior ministry’s website.

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