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Italy’s shattered Democratic Party tries to bounce back

Tens of thousands of Italians rallied in Rome on Sunday for the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) as it seeks to rebound from a shock defeat to a populist coalition in June.

Published: 1 October 2018 09:01 CEST
Italy's shattered Democratic Party tries to bounce back
The PD's rebound rally in Piazza del Popolo in Rome. Photo: Alberto Pizzoli/AFP

A banner deployed in the Piazza del Popolo, or 'people's plaza', declared that those present represented “The Italy that is not afraid”.

The nation is on the frontline of the European Union's struggle to stem migration from Africa and the Middle East, and it roiled financial markets last week when the new government appeared to ditch a stringent public deficit target in favour of increased spending to honour a key electoral pledge.

“We are in the presence of irresponsible [leaders] and ne'er-do-wells,” exclaimed former PD leader and Italian premier Matteo Renzi in reference to the heads of a government now comprised of the anti-system Five Star Movement and the hard-right League.


Former PD leader and prime minister Matteo Renzi speaks to the crowd. Photo: Alberto Pizzoli/AFP

Current PD Secretary General Maurizio Martina claimed that Italy's new leaders were “obsessed with finding an enemy rather than a solution.”

The PD is in dire need of a solution itself meanwhile, having slid from a stunning victory in 2013 through a string of defeats to the final blow in March when it recorded its worst-ever result, winning just 18.7 percent of the vote in a general election. Along the way it lost control of cities such as Rome, Turin, Venice and Genoa, a traditional stronghold.

Renzi resigned but that has not stopped the party from losing support.

“There is a risk it could sink even further,” political scientist Roberto D'Alimonte at the Italian Centre for Electoral Studies (CISE) told AFP. “We are living in unstable times, it is hard to forecast” what might happen next, he added.

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According to CISE surveys, the PD has lost much of its traditional base, concerned by economic inequality and illegal migration, and become a party that represents the upper middle class.

As for Renzi, who still wields considerable influence within the party, he has become “a bit like Silvio Berlusconi for Forza Italia, a burden” that is pulling it downwards, D'Alimonte said.

The daily La Repubblica wrote that the PD offered “the spectacle of a party on its last legs, with leaders tearing each other apart against a background of alternating, chaotic theories” on how to bounce back.

A recent opinion poll credited the party with around 16 percent support.

At the rally on Sunday, Martina declared: “We need a new PD for a new left,” while the crowd responded with cries of “Unity, unity!”


PD Secretary General Maurizio Martina. Photo: Alberto Pizzoli/AFP

By AFP's Ljubomir Milasin

MIGRANT CRISIS

Charity warns Italy’s ban on migrant rescue planes risks lives

A migrant rescue charity warned on Thursday that a new Italian ban on using surveillance planes to spot migrant boats in distress in the Mediterranean could endanger lives.

Published: 9 May 2024 15:14 CEST
Charity warns Italy's ban on migrant rescue planes risks lives

Italy’s civil aviation authority Enac issued orders in the past week saying charities will have their planes seized if they carry out “search and rescue” activities from airports in Sicily.

The move follows restrictions placed by far-right premier Giorgia Meloni’s government on charity rescue ships as it attempts to fulfil its election pledges to curb arrivals, which soared to around 158,000 last year.

Nearly 2,500 people are known to have died in 2023 trying to cross the central Mediterranean, a 75 percent increase on the previous year, according to the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM).

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

“This is definitely another attempt to criminalise search and rescue,” Giulia Messmer, spokesperson for the German charity Sea Watch, told AFP.

Sea Watch has two planes, the Seabird 1 and 2, but if they “are not able to fly anymore”, the planes “cannot communicate spotted distress cases” to authorities and ships able to carry out rescues, she said.

Enac says it is up to the coastguard, not charities, to perform search and rescue operations. The ban applies to the airports of Palermo and Trapani in Sicily, as well as the islands of Lampedusa and Pantelleria.

IN NUMBERS: Five graphs to understand migration to Italy

The IOM told AFP that while it was “waiting to understand its actual implementation, we are concerned that this decision may hinder life-saving efforts”.

Sea Watch warned the planes do not only play a vital role in spotting boats at risk of sinking, they also document the behaviour of the Libyan coastguard, often accused of violence towards migrants.

‘Political propaganda’

Immigration lawyer Fulvio Vassallo Paleologo told AFP the order issued by Enac was based on “a partial and contradictory reconstruction of national and international laws governing search and rescues”.

It was a political move, “a warning, during the election campaign” for the European Elections, he said.

Sea Watch on Twitter also called the move “an act of cowardice and cynicism… for political propaganda”.

Enac answers to Transport Minister Matteo Salvini, head of the anti-immigrant League party.

READ ALSO: ‘More will drown’: Italy accused of breaking international law on migrant rescues

Messmer, 28, said the Seabird 2 flew on Wednesday from Lampedusa despite the ban and the charity “plans to continue flying in the coming days”.

There were no issues getting the necessary authorisation from the airport to take off and land, she said.

Meloni, leader of the far-right Brothers of Italy party, was elected to office in 2022 promising to stop migrant boats arriving from North Africa.

Her government has brought in a law obliging charity ships to stage only one rescue at a time and they are often assigned ports in Italy’s distant north, making missions longer and more expensive.

Rome has also signed a controversial deal with Albania by which migrants from countries considered to be safe will be intercepted at sea and taken straight to Italian-run centres in Albania.

Critics say the deal is expensive and will prove ineffective because the two centres will only be able to hold a maximum of 3,000 people at a time and asylum applications are notorious slow.

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