Italy forms new government but populism gains ground

Anna Sonny, 26 April 2013

After two months of being suspended in a political no man’s land, Italy is finally forming a government. This week the re-elected President Giorgio Napolitiano, chose Enrico Letta, of the centre-left Democratic Party, to be Italy’s Prime Minister.

It has not been a straightforward process; elections in February were inconclusive, with the centre-left coalition led by Pier Luigi Bersani winning control the Chamber of Deputies but not gaining enough votes to control the Senate. Anti-establishment party Five Star Movement, led by former comedian Beppe Grillo performed unexpectedly well; the party held the strongest bargaining position but refused to form a coalition with any of the ‘old order’, blaming the entrenched corruption in Italy’s traditional political class for the country’s problems.

The political stalemate was a nerve-racking affair; if the country finds itself at sea economically then it is definitely the eurozone crisis that is rocking the boat. Against such an uncertain backdrop, Italy needs a stable government.

In times of austerity and soaring unemployment, it’s easy for protest parties to play up populist policies. The EU’s reaction to the eurozone crisis has provided the perfect conditions for these movements to thrive. Recent elections in Europe have shown that anti-EU rhetoric wins votes and government cuts do not.  In the French Presidential elections last year, the far-right party Front National came third in the first round of voting, winning 17.9% of the vote. And in Greece’s elections last year, neo-fascist party Golden Dawn won 18 seats in Parliament. While Grillo’s Five Star Movement does not seem as sinister as this kind of far-right extremism, it certainly embodies public disenchantment with current policy-makers in Italy and Europe as a whole.

If the EU is not careful, the very extremism it was designed to eternally stamp out could creep back in and cause its undoing.