#TRAFFIC MANAGER PRESIDENT EDITION DEAD PEOPLE MOVIE#
Salvini has long railed against “Brussels bureaucrats,” while Berlusconi famously shocked the European Parliament when, in the middle of a plenary, he suggested that its future president, Martin Schulz, was fit for a movie role as a Nazi death camp guard. Her party has strong links with Italy’s post-fascist tradition, and her views include securing borders against “mass immigration,” defending Europe’s “Christian roots,” and battling the “LGBT lobby.” Meloni also wants the EU to stop interfering with the “sovereignty of the peoples” and has sided with Poland and Hungary in their ongoing row with Brussels over their democratic backsliding. Meloni, while rejecting the far-right label, seems birds of a feather with the Hungarian and Polish leaders. “There is great sorrow over the loss of Mario Draghi,” he said.īrussels has already been dealing with right-wing governments in Budapest and Warsaw that have challenged the bloc’s legitimacy and sparked increasingly bitter showdowns over the judiciary, rights, and democracy.
The uncertainty over how exactly Italy’s right-wing coalition would position itself on all those issues has many in Brussels worried, said Arturo Varvelli of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). The prospect of a hard-right government in Rome with strong populist and Euroskeptic undertones comes as EU leaders seek to maintain cohesion of the 27-nation bloc, coordinate their response to the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, deal with a looming energy crisis caused by Moscow, and tackle skyrocketing inflation. Meloni is running as part of an alliance with Matteo Salvini, the leader of the far-right League, and Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister and head of the conservative Forza Italia the combined right-wing front is expected to snag about 45 percent of the vote-enough to secure a comfortable majority of seats in Parliament. It is currently polling at about 23 percent (up from just over 4 percent in the 2018 election), neck and neck with the center-left Democratic Party.Īnd she’s not alone. The only major party in opposition during Draghi’s tenure, the Brothers of Italy has seen its appeal steadily grow in recent months. Polls suggest that the post-fascist Brothers of Italy party has a good chance to come out on top in a general election slated for the end of September, with its leader, Giorgia Meloni, close to becoming Italy’s first far-right (and first female) leader since the end of World War II. For a year and half, Rome carried yet again almost the same weight as Paris or Berlin.īut following the downfall of Draghi’s national unity government this month, Italian political parties have swiftly leapt back into campaign mode, and the country finds itself plunged in a state of deep uncertainty-at the worst possible time. The former president of the European Central Bank, Draghi played a crucial role as Italy and its neighbors sought to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic, a devastating war on the EU’s doorstep, and an energy crisis that is sending the cost of living through the roof. For the first time in decades, under now outgoing Prime Minister Mario Draghi, Italy seemed to have claimed back its mantle as one of the pillars of the European Union.