 I'm very pleased to welcome you to this IIEA webinar. My name is Barry Kulfer, and I'm the director of research here at the Institute. We're delighted to be joined today by Dr. Giuseppe Porcaro, who is head of outreach at Brogol, the renowned economic policy think tank based in Brussels. And Giuseppe's been generous enough to take time out of his busy schedule to speak to us, which you greatly appreciate. Giuseppe is going to discuss the current political landscape in Italy and will assess the prospects for the new Italian government and what it may mean for the politics of Italy and indeed for the European Union. Giuseppe is going to speak for up to about 20 minutes. After this, we'll then engage in a bit of a discussion between myself and our researcher, Dara Lawler, before going to the questions and answers with you, our audience. You'll be able to join the discussion as ever using the questions and answer function on Zoom, which you should see on your screen. Please feel free to send your questions in throughout the session as they occur to you as ever and we'll come to them once Giuseppe has finished his presentation and once you've gone through our short conversation. You can also participate in the discussion on Twitter using the handle at IIEA, a reminder that today's presentation and Q and A are both on the record. I'll now formally and briefly introduce Giuseppe and hand over to him. Dr. Giuseppe Porcaro leads outreach activities for the Brogol think tank, including as regards communications, media events and media events and publications as well as membership relations. Dr. Porcaro has been at Brogol since 2014 and until December, 2019 served as head of communications and events. Dr. Porcaro holds a PhD in geography of development from the University of Naples, Laurie Antali. Giuseppe was sec gen of the European Youth Forum between 2009 and 2014 and previously worked at the World Bank in Kosovo and Paris, as well as at the European office of the World Organization of the Scout Movement, which is actually pretty cool. Giuseppe, thank you very much again for being with us and I'll hand you the floor. Well, Barry, thank you so much for this introduction and of course it's my pleasure and honor to speak with you, the Institute of International and European Affairs in Ireland. And well, I will be happy to share a very broad and let's say general introduction about this landscape that is quite complicated sometimes to understand from outside of Italian politics and what has been going on so far with the recent elections and the different events that led to the formation of the Italian government just two days ago and just one day ago, just to remind the timeline, we had the government obtained the trust as we sort of say, like there was possibly both at the second chamber completing the process for having it fully entrusted and operational. So what I do today, I think that it's going to be the most interesting part that I would like to hear from you are definitely the questions because obviously that's where curiosities and where analysis can go a little bit deeper. Also for me, just as a disclaimer, I think that you will get a very specific point of view on Italian politics because I'm Italian, but as Barry has mentioned, I've been living abroad for quite some time, even though I still have very strong ties, I've been let's say involved into the Italian environment, especially Italian politics for a while, while in the mid-2000s I was involved into youth politics. So you mentioned the European Youth Forum that was during that time I was involved into the makings and the creation of the Italian National Youth Councils. And why I'm mentioning this at the beginning, it's not just to give you a little bit of a flavor of my biography, but it's because at that time, the Italy didn't have a National Youth Council, and together with a group of associations and political parties, we set this up together. And this was the time where Georgia Melloni was the Ministry of Youth in the Belosconi government. So just to say that that was my first encounter with Georgia back in those days, I was speaking about 2006 more or less. So quite a long time ago, but it marked somehow in terms of generation. So to say like I'm from the same generation of Georgia Melloni. And somehow I come from a very different story, and you mentioned the World Organization of the Scouts movement, but somehow also very similar. We are coming from a kind of political education, political experience, which is being passing through the what we call the school or the educational school of youth organizations being then political or educational non-partisan. There is something in common in this. And I'll tell you more afterwards, because I think this is an element that shouldn't be forgotten when we analyzed the work of the new prime minister. But coming back to my specific point of view, and that's which has limitations. So since 2006, I've not been in Italy as a permanent resident. So my view has been a little bit in and out, which is an interesting point of view. It's not completely, I would say an expert point of view or a foreigner point of view because I've been keeping having close ties with Italy in my current role at Bruegel as I'm part of the, I mean, I'm coordinating the relations with our members and part of the membership is state members. So Italy is one of the state members. So I've been dealing with the Italian government for the past years, the different Italian governments for the past year. So I've been keeping having an eyes in, but also this kind of eyes out by being in Brussels. So that's what I would try to give to you, this kind of perspective that is a little bit in, a little bit out. It might be different from a perspective from someone that is sitting in Rome at the moment or someone sitting in Naples or someone sitting in Milan. So to say, because the way Italian politics is seen is very much territorial and is very much linked to where you are. And that's something that maybe abroad can be rarely understood in terms of things. But first things first, I want to give you just an overview about where and how did we got to the elections? I mean, I know you are an informed audience. So maybe you know all these very well, but it's very good to have a summary and have a recap about how did we got there on the 25th of September with the elections. Then what happened during the elections and having a look again to the results and what do they mean? And then this phase that has been opening up after the elections and let's say that has been closed this week, which has been the moment of forming the government. And then what's going on from Monday on, like from today on, which means what to be expected from the action of this government, what doesn't mean for Europe as very assayed and so on. So I'll try to summarize and have these four elements. Let's say this is going to be more sketches than very in-depth conversation because we don't have so much time. And this will need as Italian politics is like a melodrama or a big soap opera or a Brazilian telenovela. So this would need not one Netflix series, but 12 seasons at least of Netflix series. So we're going to condense all these into a short YouTube summary instead. So also as a disclaimer, once again, I mean, this is really a very informal talk I want to have. I'm not really prepared a speech or whatsoever. So I apologize in case there are some stuff that might not be completely, you know, coherent with each other. Or if I jump from one thing to another, please be free afterwards to ask questions. So first things first, how did we get there? I mean, we had a very turbulent time in Italian politics. And one could say Italian politics is always turbulent. But if you look at four and a half, four years ago, when we had our last general elections, we had a particular institutional, that lock at that time, because we had a parliament basically with no clear majority and what happened as a consequence of this has been two subsequent governments held by the same person, Giuseppe Conte, the five-star movement back then was the main party that was coming out of the elections. Very specular governments, the first government who hardly found a majority and it was a mix of what back then were dubbed as the main populist forces of the Italian parliament, the five-star movement and the League, the Northern League. And this led to, let's say, short-lived government, one year, one year and something between Salvini and Conte, Salvini is the leader of the League. With the very, it was a very strange animal. We've been calling it the yellow and green government. Why it was a strange animal because it tried to combine a party, which both parties were very populist and dubbed at the European level as anti-euro, anti-Europe base and so on, but the reality is a little bit more complicated than that. But basically they tried to merge something that is a very pro-business conservative court from the north of the country, which was, which is represented by the League with the five-star movement, which has been always an anti-system pro-small medium SMEs but also very much pro, let's say, measures which would try to ease the life of the poor people in the country. Simplifying, basically you had the mix between the champions of the northern industrialism and the champions of the Southern assistance, what we call assistentialism, basically, the idea that money should be given, for example, with the universal citizen income to everyone. So basically really two completely different approaches when it comes to economics. The only thing that made them in common was probably the fact that they were anti-system, they were at the opposition and this didn't really last very long. And what happened afterwards was what we say, completely switch in the orientation of the government so basically five-star movement makes an alliance with the Democratic Party, which is the main centrist left-ish party that we have in Italy for something that looked like as a transformation of the five-star movement itself. And that's very important to understand because the five-star movement has been having this switch from being the anti-system party more and more going, converging into the center of the political arena and more and more becoming a systemic party. So that's what I say to a lot of commentators and people from outside, which cannot really understand what has been going on the last five years. But the five-star movements were like the Gilles Jeune or they were like the complete crazy people and the party and so on, but then all of a sudden changes. Yes, they completely changed. And the switching point has been obviously COVID. You should not forget that Italy has had the worst COVID wave of one of the worst in the world, not just of Europe. And this has been really marking the way the government, these governments of five-star and PD has been acting. With a lot of responsibility, but also taking a lot of heat. Of course, this has been a huge, huge, huge heat for the country. And with a lot of opposition on, especially on the right-wing side, building up on people that were against the vaccines, people that were against the measures, the lockdown measures, but also other measures and so on. So basically, we arrived to a point where there is high-pitched drama back this winter where the five-star movements, which had this soul of anti-system, but then being co-opted in the system, being responsible and so on, basically started to have very, I mean, I'm simplifying here, but huge big internal struggles. And these internal struggles evolved into a split of one part, led by the then ministry of Foreign Affairs, Luigi Di Maio, from Giuseppe Conte, side Giuseppe Conte, which was the prime minister at the time. This big split, let's say, was undergoing and basically had two moments. The first moment was the actual fall of the Conte government, mainly caused actually by the other parties which were supporting, especially Matteo Renzi, who didn't want this party because we are now COVID finished, the big unity, let's say, unity moment as finishes. And that moment is pivotal to understand what happened afterwards because that's the moment where the next generation EU plans are starting to be made. There is potentially, potentially, there is money flowing in Italy. There is the potential that this current government, PD, PD five-star, which had to take so much responsibility then hit during the COVID, could have bear also some fruits and some, let's say, positive outlook towards the electorate. This is the moment where the government split and goes back into a crisis. And that's when we get draggy with this very large, almost gross coalition government which was led until February, which again gets split because of an internal fight between the five-star movements. This is really like very quick and dirty explanation about the facts ongoing and how we arrived to the fall of the draggy government and the elections on the 25th of September. Now, what has to be said in this set is that what has to be said is that in these circumstances, first of all, we had a lot of internal fights everywhere. So Italy arrives to these elections with everyone basically having problems because they were not expecting such an election to take place at that specific moment in time. So that's the first thing that everyone was not ready for it, especially those that were doing, were in the government. So especially everyone that was inside the coalition government, which is everyone except Giorgio Meloni and Fratelli d'Italia. So you can already imagine that we arrived to the scenario with a potential winner over there because a lot of very complicated choices had to be made. A lot of even the Lega Nord which was very much this anti-system movement and so on had to be co-opted with the draggy government. So everyone was tamed in the political system except Giorgio Meloni. So from a purely electoral point of view, that sounds quite a no-brainer that she won the elections. The other thing that I want to say in this scenario building is that obviously when you have SNAP elections because those were like SNAP elections, the big thing that you had to consider is that in Italy, the electoral system gives a premium only to electoral alliances. So you have this scenario, you already had Fratelli d'Italia on the right side which was the only opposition party, but also you had let's say a smart logic of the center right at that stage which was we have two parties at the government, Lega and Forza Italia. Representing Lega represented the way of saying we are crazy because Matteo Salvini is crazy. I mean, admittedly, but can work with someone like Draggy. So showing international investors and so on that this is a political force that actually can be co-opted into a government and not doing too much harm. But Lusconi represented the very old moderate kind of right wing, pro-European and so on which everyone thought it was completely disappeared but actually we'll see the election results change a bit this outlook. So you had two parties inside the government and then you were one party in the coalition. So they could really catch by saying we are not together in the government, the Draggy government but we are still an alliance. This was a very, very old animal if you think about it from a political point of view but very smart because they catch votes on one side and they catch the votes on the other side basically of the spectrum. On the other side, the people that were governing so far the five-star movement and democratic party entrenched themselves instead of forming an alliance there's been quite high pitch drama over the summer about who would have been together in the elections and as usual with the Italian let's say progressive centric left-ground they've been splitting and splitting even more you had instead of saying we need to make a common front we had them splitting between the five-star and the PD because of the five-star being accused of the ones that have been making the fall of the Draggy government the PD entrenched themselves saying we will never ally with them. Now the second part was with let's say the more moderate like Calenda and Renzi, Matteo Renzi and Calenda were two people that used to be in the democratic party they split out of the democratic party and now formed what they call the third poll which in their mind should be some sort of more centrist Nick Clegg, Macron kind of style of thing in their mind so they wanted to create their own shop and they split it from the PD. So obviously we arrived on the 25th of September with a situation which was quite clear on the ground there was no surprise whatsoever that the right-wing coalition would have won that was a matter of fact on the beginning of August when the electoral alliances were done it was quite clear this wasn't done deal which put, and here I go with a bit on the electoral campaign itself put Georgia Meloni as a winning horse in a very comfortable situation and that's where I would like to spend a bit of words about Georgia. Instead of doing a completely fighting campaign, the main critics to her abroad have been saying she's a radical she's far right, she's anti-system she's friend with Orban she's friend with Marine Le Pen and you name it, all these things which are anathema in the, let's say democratic Europe. She has been playing her card very, very cool she's been making a campaign which was completely very soft she has prepared in the ground for becoming the prime minister basically. Now coming to the elections these were no big as I said before they were, those were no surprise so we basically had a right wing centre right as they keep calling it centre right in Italy and this is something that I guess that you might have a lot of questions on it's very important they keep calling themselves a centre right with 43.79% of shares on the lower chamber which is let's say the largest and the most representative one and you have basically Fratelli d'Italia and Giorgio Meloni with 26% you get Lega with 8.7% which is a really, really bad result for Lega like really, really bad they were at the European elections I think that they were at 20 plus or something like this in just in a few years ago and you have Forza Italia which was the big surprise everyone thought that Forza Italia would have completely disappeared from the landscape like maybe barely doing the 3% which 3% is the minimum that you need to get in order to get into the parliament they got basically at the same level of Lega they got more than 8% so that's for the centre right and then on the centre left so to say there's been quite a disaster I mean the Democratic Party got less than 20% they got at 19% this is really, really a problematic thing that if you want to do the analysis of what's going on on the left side we need to spend some words on that the Greens don't really exist in Italy that's also an anomaly of the political system they are very, very small party and so on they had a coalition with the more left party which has also taken several configurations at every election so this coalition got more than 3% which is a surprise because in the previous parliament they didn't even got in so that's a surprise and interesting element of the stuff but that's basically what it is, 26% which is all in all very, very low result and then we got the five star movement which were the first party in the previous elections they got at 15%, 15.4% now most commentator from outside would say the five star movement lost the elections because they were the first party and now they are 15% but if you've been hearing every single report of the elections the day after, the week after five star movement was deemed to be one of the winners of the elections and this is like the weird things about the way Italian politics and reporting is made because all it was based it was based not on the previous electoral results but on the polls of like six months before the polls six months before gave to five star movement less than 10% and then by having 15% made the strategy of Giuseppe Conte which basically said, okay I'm going to do my own outlet I'm now going back with my, let's say more populist agenda but really also more progressive and more left-wing comparing to the democratic party which was like the party of Draghi let's put it like that, of the Draghi agenda that's what was the buzzword in the electoral campaign the Draghi agenda basically got a 15% and then you have the third poll as I was saying before those wannabe Macronistas of Acione, Italia Viva and so on which got 7.7% which is not bad but it's not the big explore which they were like thinking before but they exist it means that this is they exist and it's a very important element of what I would say about the future scenarios in a second so that's what we got at the election so not big surprise now what has been a surprise on the comments outside Italy about this what has been a surprise is that a lot of people has been dubbing this as the big wing of the far right which nominally it is because Fratelli d'Italia looks like I mean it is a right-wing party but there are two elements if you take the overall result of the coalition which is 43% what I was saying before and you take the results of the center right coalition as a wall on the previous elections and when Berlusconi won last time back in 2011 if I'm not wrong those are actually more or less the same or less than what they were so basically the theory goes that and the reading of these goes that the votes that went on that side of the political spectrums are more or less the same and also if you look at the history of Italian elections since 1994 on when for the first time we got for Fratelli with a very similar coalition when the first time for Z'Italia got the government in 94 you got Him, Lega and Allianza Nazionale which basically is the same kind of people that were with Georgia Meloni so in the end of the day it is the same people if you look at the government that is being formed and here I go to the government side if you look at the government that is being formed it is very much, I wouldn't say a replica a total replica of the governments of Berlusconi one, two, three but it is very, very similar it's really not a case that Georgia Meloni was in the government of Berlusconi back in 2006, 2007 so there is this first element that's of reading of what's now on the table is like beware of saying this is the same thing of urban winning the elections or the Kaczynski brothers in Poland even though the party of Georgia Meloni is obviously in the family, the ECR family so it is part of the conservative family where those parties are born but this coalition is very much the old saying that, I mean like the people are the same the same people that, some of the people were in 94 where Gnazio Larussa, which was, I mean was in the government of Fini with Fini and so on he was there since 1994 now what is different? What is different is that Georgia Meloni is indeed a novelty she is indeed someone that has a specific history which cannot be ignored so the fact that she comes directly from and it is the first time that a party that has some in the geology even far away as is coming from the far right and the fascist party that's definitely something that is new however it's not new in the sense that since 1994 these people have had ministers have been swearing the Italian constitutions what I'm trying to say they have been normalized in the Italian so if you see it from an Italian perspective this has been very much not a novelty and if you speak with people they don't see this as a shocking thing at least as a coalition but of course if you go and see about the personal history of some of these people you might dig into more complicated past and that is worrying to a certain extent so what I want to say here is that what to look ahead and it's more like the final part of the presentation what to look ahead? I think that in her speech at the Lord chamber today this week Georgia Meloni made it very clear that she is going to be honoring Italian international positioning when it comes to NATO, when it comes to European Union when it comes to the position of the EU so I personally don't see any risk in this moment especially because it has been very clear very clear about the way the very complicated situation we have economically speaking and politically speaking they've been very very careful to be making big statements so on this front I see very much continuity with the Draghi government and you might have seen Draghi's action at the last European council and last weeks has been somehow hinting at that as well also the position of Italy into this world energy thing about asking for a price cap has been quite specific Draghi has been himself that there is some national interest I would say at the moment which goes beyond the left and right divide and I think this is going to go on where we are going to see a problem or like conflict is going to be on the same old kind of things I mean you see on the economic side there have been again statements that could have been made by Berlusconi in 1994 he wants to have a flat tax he wants to raise the they want to raise the level of cash withdrawal which is a very worrying signal when it comes to a fight against the tax evasion and informal economy or illegal economy so they are all signals that are contradictory on one hand I would say this government might continue things which the Draghi government has been made I think that the commitments are there the next generation EU there will be minor adjustments but it will follow the race in which we are there will be other things that might be more worrying when it comes to the economy making the interests but that's also to say how much space they will be in the international arena to do that and then there is the discourse part that on the discourse part they will do quite a lot you know the discourse part that's where they can show more this kind of nationalist like rebrand everything by being national this kind of nationalistic flavor to everything and that's where there might be more of a cultural fight and that's where Italy has not making peace with its past and I'm not sure that the way the next months are going to play out we've been seeing already something quite worrying with a protest at the political science faculty this week in Rome where there's been police attacking students students that wanted to hang a banner saying that they didn't want fascists inside the building so I'm seeing this level of tension could potentially escalate in the level of the opposition but the problem is and here we'll finish the problem is that on the left side the democratic party is in this array they need to have a congress pretty soon but the party is completely in this array and completely drained from 11 years of even more of having been at the government but without never winning an election and this is really the problem you know at the end the first words of Giorgio Meloni in our speech at the lower chamber this week was for the first time after 11 years there is a government in Italy which is compliant with the results of the elections which is actually true and this is the real problem that the Italians probably wanted to signal with these elections they've been fed up with electing people but not really having a clear indication about whom is going to govern so from that point of view Giorgio Meloni got it right I mean like this is really the first government in many, many years actually since the last Berlusconi government and this is even more symbolic if you think about it that is elected by the people and the big fight will be over the constitutional reform like she will try to change the constitution and make it a presidential republic and that will also be I think that one of the big you know like more than maybe on the economics where she will be conservatives pro-business but pretty much pro-European in the end of the day I think the big fight will be the constitutional reform and on the let's say more cultural stuff I would like to stop here because I know that they put a lot of things on the fire and I could speak forever when it comes to Italian politics so I hand the words to you Barry and I'm pretty sure that there will be some questions