THE Italian general election results have shaken the European Union after the governing ‘Centre Left’ pro-EU coalition, led by Matteo Renzi, got just 22.8% of the vote. The Five Star Movement, led by Luigi Di Maio, has taken over southern Italy, which has 50% youth unemployment. It won 32.6% of the vote and is now the biggest party. It is claiming the right to form a government, but needs a partner.
The right wing coalition, led by Matteo Salvini, which includes the ultra right Northern League, won 37% of the vote, it is also claiming the right to form a government, but also needs a partner.
The ‘Free and Equal Party’ won just 3.4% of the vote. Both the Five Star and the right coalition are committed to manifestos that put them on a collision course with the Franco-German leadership of the EU.
The first stands for finding an alternative to the euro – it dropped its policy of leaving the EU to fight the election. The millions of unemployed youth and the masses of workers that voted for it will demand action, and if not enough is forthcoming quickly enough, will take revolutionary action for themselves. The right coalition want to revise all treaties, and rejects any more austerity policies.
Matteo Salvini, leader of The Northern League, claimed the centre-right coalition had won the national elections and his party would lead it in forming a government.
Speaking at the Northern League headquarters in Milan, Salvini said the euro was – and remains – a mistake, but he ruled out a referendum on whether the single currency area’s third-largest economy should leave as ‘unthinkable’.
He tried to assure the bosses and bankers that they had nothing to fear from what he described as an ‘extraordinary victory’ for the anti-immigrant party and its centre-right partners, in an election that saw voters punish Matteo Renzi’s ruling centre-left Democratic Party.
League officials however told the media that the League’s strong showing was ‘a clear signal to Europe, which has mistreated Italians.’ Youth unemployment in Italy is at 31%, and across the southern Mezzogiorno is above 50 per cent.
The Five Star Movement, founded by stand-up comedian Beppe Grillo, will now be expected to take action on their behalf. ‘Nobody will be able to govern without the Five Star Movement,’ said senior party member Riccardo Fraccaro.
‘We will assume the responsibility to build this government, but in a different way, talking with all the parties about what this country needs.’ The Italian capitalist class is now in a state of alarm. ‘Di Maio wins, Italy ungovernable,’ was the front-page headline on the first edition of La Stampa newspaper. Italy has now entered a revolutionary situation.
Lorenzo Codogno, a former chief economist at the Italian Treasury, commented: ‘Italy is far from having sorted its long-standing problems, and now it will have new ones. Be prepared for long and complex negotiations that will take months.’ However, Italian workers and youth, both employed and unemployed, will not wait for months!
Meanwhile in Germany, Chancellor Merkel has been forced to surrender the power to appoint her own finance minister. The SPD will appoint the key minister with anti EU feeling rising in Germany!
France’s Macron has been demanding a Eurozone ‘grand bargain’ with Germany handing over a hundred billion euros for public investment in return for productivity reforms, and anti union measures throughout the EU.
Merkel fears that the German workers will not stand for Germany finding billions to fund a European Monetary Fund for attacks on unions. There is no doubt that after the Brexit humiliation, the EU has now taken a bashing in Italy. The working class of Europe is now on the march and clearly Brexit was just the start with much more to follow. The EU must be brought down. Its bosses and bankers must be expropriated and be replaced by the Socialist United States of Europe!
