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Something that always bothered me about the Motte is that while massive cultural/political events are going on in Europe, one needs to dive deep into the roundup thread to find any discussion of it at all. Meanwhile the latest trans-people-in-school or outrageous-nytimes-oped controversy (which nobody will remember in a week) will have 500 comment threads dedicated to extreme nitpicking.
Anyway sorry for the rant. It looks like the far-right (of the quite openly far-right, even post-fascist variety) has just won the Italian elections and will very likely going to provide the prime minister to a cabinet that will include a 85 year old Berlusconi among others. Italy is the 3rd most populous and wealthy country in the EU. It also acts as a perennial threat to the stability of the Brussels-led order and the euro, since an Italian default or currency exit would almost definitely trigger the collapse of the euro with who knows what consequences. The EU looks determined to fight. Meloni herself does not sound like the type of politician who will accept to be crushed as easily as her predecessors. Here is a French interview with a 19 years old activist Meloni. She still sounds like a true believer to me. To get the gist of just how radical (from the EU-norm) she is willing to be with regard to cultural issues, I recommend this speech from 3 years ago (with English subs).
What are your expectations? Are we coming near a grand showdown? How is this going to interact with the looming threat of grid collapse in Europe? Russia sanctions and the European willingness to keep Ukrainian army in the field? NATO expansions? Is her family and God rhetoric just fluff or do you expect some real moves in this regard? When the ECB will have to start increasing interest rates substantially and Italy has to choose between bankruptcy or euro-exit, how will this go under this government?
P.S. Italy was one of the most anal countries with regard to vaccine oppression and corona measures in Europe. Does anyone know what the position of the Fratelli was back then? And how they talk about these things now?
I'd say that thus far the reaction to Meloni by "official" Europe has been a bit subdued. After all, she's not a hard euroskeptic and not anti-NATO; those are probably far more important regarding how the institutions view challengers than any cultural war issues or even fascist legacies. Besides, her party and coalition are a known quality, they've already been in government previously (under Berlusconi). There's going to be a lot of rhetoric going back and forth, but the actual EU reaction depends on whether the Meloni government consciously goes on a warpath with EU, like Orbán has done.
I think most EU officials (the ones smarter than Von der Leyen) have been silent so far in order to not increase Meloni’s support even more. Random Eurocrats warning you against voting a certain way is usually a strong reason for voting that way.
Von Der Leyen went beyond warning, she threatened the people of Italy if they voted for Meloni. The only thing worse than nationalism is globalism. I love Meloni and I understand why the evil politicians in Germany and France hate her, but I don't understand why ordinary people do, unless they just go with the media flow.
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Yeah, but there's no such necessity any more, with the election gone.
My best bet is that they are waiting for Meloni's move before declaring war. She was explicitly endorsing the pro-NATO sentiment during the campaign and claimed to not have any intentions to mess with the Euro. But everyone can see that her other stated goals as well as her coalition partners are going to push her towards confrontation with the EU on these subjects.
The best course of action for a eurocrat at this point would be to wait and make sure Meloni doesn't have to get into public confrontations with the EU.
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