To oppose the onslaught of the European right, one can only vote in defence; to attack the majority which in Italy is showing early signs of difficulty, an attack vote is possible. Let’s resort to the language of football, talking about today’s and tomorrow’s elections, taking advantage of the coincidence with another European challenge, that of football which is about to begin (on the continent there will be many more viewers for that event than actual voters in this round) .
A vote in defense because the left-wing (EGU, green, socialist and democratic) and center (liberal and popular) groups in the next European Parliament are destined to shrink, while those on the right (conservatives and identitarians) will grow. What’s worse, the initiative is now entirely in the hands of representatives of a right that is at times nebulous and still divided into different formations (also well present in the popular party) but which thinks of possible convergences, new groups and new geometries.
For the “moderates” who openly look in that direction – and who have anticipated the shift with a reversal in the underlying political choices (war, austerity, environment, migrants) – the problem now is finding a way to make a certain share presentable of unpresentables, no longer beat them. On the other hand, socialists, liberals and popular hope to shore up the old alliance, widening it not too far to the right and without too many concessions (in terms of positions).
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The war, the realism and idealism of the vote
The electoral adverts of the representative of the outgoing alliance, Ursula von der Leyen, who was the representative of the outgoing alliance for the entire legislature, now resemble those of certain Trumpian fanatics armed to the teeth, except that she prefers bunkers and missiles to machine guns which seems to be dying from the desire to shoot personally. The war on European territory changed a lot, but not everything as one might have believed and even hoped for. The substantial sharing of the Atlanticist line on Ukraine by European socialists and greens (the liberals are even beyond it) means that today it is difficult to imagine a watershed vote between the prospects of war or peace.
If not in the sense that Orbán tries to give him, that is, but from the perspective of a Putin supporter who is much more interested in humiliating and downsizing the Union than in making it a protagonist of peace. Having immediately discarded all the margins of mediation between NATO and Russia, thus even renouncing the protection of its immediate commercial and energy interests, the Union has been attested for an infinite time in the role of the passer-by in its own home.
Not only the commercials and electoral programs, but also the more concrete and already decided spending programs of Brussels plan the continuation of the war in Ukraine only by virtue of a gigantic rearmament effort. Curiously, this assumption of European military-industrial responsibility goes hand in hand with the thesis that, instead, only the Ukrainians can decide when the time will be to negotiate. In line with Washington.
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Rather than winning the elections, which is unlikely, to offer the prospect of real change, European socialists and democrats would therefore have to shed their skin, which is impossible. Yet focusing only on today’s and tomorrow’s vote to make predictions about the Union’s line of conduct is not correct. In fact, the eternal unresolved issue in Brussels continues to be driven above all by the 27 continental capitals and in fact it is only for this reason that the barometer does not already now and stably point towards a right-centre presidency of the Commission. Therefore it is not entirely wrong to look at the elections also from a national perspective.
In our home, the discovery of these last days of the electoral campaign is that the Prime Minister – the central woman on the cover of the Economist among those who “will shape Europe”, the others being Le Pen and von der Leyen – risks stumble along the triumphal path that she had designed for herself when she decided to run as the sole leader. For twenty years the party that comes first in the European elections in Italy has exceeded 30%, for ten years in the transition from the national to the European vote the main government party has significantly increased its consensus. Fratelli d’Italia may be the first to miss both of these goals.
A setback which could have various explanations, but which mainly measures the distance between the electoral promises and the reality of twenty months of government. Here is all the space for the counterattack and attack of the opposition, in this case gratified by the electoral law which allows the problem of alliances to be set aside. And it will be a good idea to carefully count the votes on Monday, to evaluate whether the right has maintained or lost its attractiveness. And to correctly size the majority in power, given that it behaves as if it had that majority consensus of voters which in reality it also lacked on 25 September 2022. The interest goes beyond national borders, because Italy remains a case unique in Europe: founding country led by the leader of a party with roots planted in fascism, the only one where there is a coalition in government with the three shades of the continental right.
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Enlargement and defence, the future Commission
The combination of these motivations, the weight of the global problems that Europe will have to face and also the crucial historical moment that these elections encounter would leave us waiting for a large turnout in the vote. But we know from the start that this will not be the case. Also due to the responsibility of the parties who did everything possible to discourage turnout. Without going back to the limits of the electoral campaign, it is enough to highlight how they managed to worsen even an electoral law that was much better than the political one, proportional with a threshold (a threshold which, to be honest, in this case has no motivation).
Even when the possibility of choosing candidates is finally recognized in theory – there are preferences and not blocked lists – the merry-go-round of fake candidatures destined to renounce and of flirtatious names (“dictated”) makes the attempt to deceive voters clear. Until the very end.
