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What’s stopping Italy’s two leading parties from forming a government?

Italy's anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) and the far-right League party are labouring to agree on a coalition government, with stark policy differences dividing them.

Published: 10 May 2018 16:50 CEST
Updated: 11 May 2018 13:15 CEST

What's stopping Italy's two leading parties from forming a government?

Luigi Di Maio of the Five Star Movement (L) and Matteo Salvini of the League. Photo: Tiziana Fabi/AFP

Apart from quibbling about who gets what job in a future government, here are facts about what the two players have in common – and more crucially, what they do not.

Common ground

Both parties strongly reject what they see as the elitist, old-fashioned style of mainstream Italian politics. Between them they hold a majority in both houses of parliament.

They admire US President Donald Trump and Russia's Vladimir Putin and advocate lifting sanctions against Russia.

They both want to lower the retirement age and take a tough stance on immigration.

Universal income

M5S wooed voters with the proposal of a universal basic income. The League said that will create a culture of dependency.

The League has since softened on the issue, saying it could accept such an initiative if it remains limited and comes with conditions.

The League's flagship policy is a universal 15-percent tax for all Italian taxpayers and businesses – apparently incompatible with M5S's costly universal income plan.

Regional divide

The League was founded in 1989 as a northern Italian movement demanding independence from the country's impoverished south. Matteo Salvini broadened it into an Italian nationalist movement when he took the reins in 2013. But the League still wants greater autonomy for the north to manage its riches.

M5S has deep roots in the south, where it has promised to invest heavily.

Split on Europe

Although both were originally eurosceptic parties, M5S and the League have since split on the issue of Europe.

Salvini advocates renegotiating European treaties, and insists the euro is doomed to fail.

M5S leader Luigi Di Maio has made overtures towards the bloc. His MEPs have rarely sided with eurosceptics in the European parliament.

READ ALSO: Italy takes 'big steps' towards forming a government

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.

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