Should we be afraid of Italy? The weekly magazine The Economist asked the question before Sunday’s elections. Then came European Commission President von der Leyen with her unbeatable Helga imitation from the TV series ‘Allo ‘Allo!: ‘We have tools.’ That was an undisguised threat if the post-fascist Italians didn’t behave. The smoother version Prime Minister Rutte said, who said to Sven Kockelmann that ‘vigilance’ was required; but he expected the Italians to stick to “a whole list” of reforms to qualify for the billions from the corona recovery fund.
More fear and trembling than curiosity about the why of Giorgia Meloni’s victory. Her party was the only one that hadn’t reigned before, I read as an explanation of the success. The assumption was that the Fratelli d’Italia had been on some sort of responsibility holiday. Also read: the move to the right does not say so much about the preference of the Italians as about the failure of the conservative middle parties. As in Sweden, they should never have gotten involved with the far right. If they hadn’t, there wouldn’t have been a speck in the air. Even with this story, we don’t get much wiser about what makes Meloni with her cracking voice and excited views so attractive.
Nine years ago I interviewed the German sociologist Wolfgang Streeck about his book Purchased time. In it he describes the pyramid scheme with which the EU buys off internal tensions and contradictions, with ever higher mountains of credit. Because of all this debt, the interdependence is increasing and so is the need for ‘good behaviour’, to be monitored by the European Commission.
During the euro crisis in 2012, ECB President Draghi made his famous ‘whatever it takes’ statement; the ECB would buy up unlimited debt. Countries had to reform to get rid of their national debt. Draghi said that same year in an interview: ‘Many governments have yet to realize that they have long since lost their national sovereignty.’ They can vote, but not choose. The irritation about this is in any case the beginning of an explanation for Meloni’s profit: she will soon be the first prime minister since 2011 – when Berlusconi was exchanged at the hands of Merkel and Sarkozy for the technocrat Monti – who was not appointed, but was elected. .
I couldn’t reach Wolfgang Streeck, but I did find a few recent interviews. We are experiencing the umpteenth episode of his book Purchased time. Today, Italy can hope for more than 200 billion from the Brussels corona support fund. Of course reform must be done, as Rutte underlined with Sven. Meloni can do little but bow to Brussels, with an Italian government debt of 150 percent of GDP.
It’s the humiliation that fills the Italians: a Brussels techno elite that looks down on the country that is not moving forward with reforms. Youth unemployment, just like ten years ago, is a dramatic 25 percent. Streeck already wrote in his book that ‘an entire generation is going into the swamp’. We are a lot of credit further and nothing has progressed. Italy faces a long and painful process, writes The Economist this week. The German Bundesverfassungsgericht was the only one that dared to say: how long will these painful reforms last, until the end of time?
The European monetary system is kept afloat with more and more credit. Where there is more money than goods, inflation follows. Putin is now being blamed for exploding energy prices. But inflation has been around for a long time and is being felt in house and stock prices throughout the European Union. The question Streeck raised ten years ago is even more topical than it was then: when is the time sold out?
Streeck looks at the long line. Until the fall of the Wall, Christian Democracy united conservative employers and anti-communist workers. That combination fell apart after 1989. The old corporatism gave way to ‘marketocracy’ and Christian Democracy perished. Something similar happened to the left. Previously, social democracy brought workers and an engaged middle class together. Three decades later, the intellectual middle group has gone green and pro-migration; the working class became orphaned, as did the conservatives. They found each other, not only in Italy but all over the western world.
Meloni has swallowed her anti-Euro sentiments. Italy desperately needs that 200 billion, she will gruntly agree to all the conditions and at the same time throw sand in the machine. The clash with the EU is to be expected in terms of much-discussed European values. Conservative Meloni is determined to stop illegal immigration and that goes against Brussels orthodoxy, as well as her lashing out at woke and her advocacy of the traditional family. With Poland and Hungary in mind, the European Union is now also inflexible from a moral point of view, with financial support again as a means of tightening the reins. “We have tools.”
You don’t have to be as conservative as Meloni to be able to share the feelings of inappropriate Brussels meddling. In the Netherlands, the concept of Europe à la carte is a curse in the church of the Brussels rules that apply to everyone. Yet that is exactly which Wolfgang Streeck advocates. More room for national individuality, less Brussels restraint. To quote him again: “Life is so much easier when you don’t have to tell others how to behave.”