Conte warns Draghi over any shift on financial aid to Italian people
Tension within Rome coalition as Five Star tries to defend flagship policy from business criticism
Italy’s populist Five Star Movement has demanded the national unity government of prime minister Mario Draghi provide more help to families and small businesses hit by rising food and energy prices.
The populist grouping reaffirmed its support for the cross-party ruling coalition but in a reflection of growing tensions within Draghi’s administration, Five Star leader Giuseppe Conte warned the premier against taking any steps to curb the so-called “citizens income” poverty-relief programme that began in 2019.
One of Five Star’s flagship policies, the scheme is being blamed by many employers for creating acute labour shortages in critical sectors of the Italian economy as it recovers from the pandemic. Businesses have been pushing for alterations to it to nudge people back into the labour force.
“We are willing to share government responsibility as we have done so far in a loyal and constructive way, but we want major changes,” said Conte after an hour-long meeting with Draghi on Wednesday. “We will no longer permit the citizen’s income to be questioned on a daily basis.”
Conte’s discussion with his successor as prime minister comes after the Five Star party was hit by a dramatic split. Foreign minister Luigi Di Maio walked out of the group last month with around 60 of its 227 members of parliament amid sharp tensions over Rome’s response to the war in Ukraine.
While Di Maio has stood solidly behind Draghi’s support for Kyiv, Conte has been critical, suggesting arming Ukraine merely prolonged the conflict. Withdrawing from Five Star at a press conference last month, Di Maio said he could no longer be part of a party that had failed to fulfil its “duty to support the government without ambiguity” in the face of Russia’s aggression in Europe.
While the split over Ukraine prompted speculation that Conte may withdraw support from Draghi’s government, foreign affairs did not figure at the meeting on Wednesday evening. Conte focused instead on favourite Five Star socio-economic policies, including taxes on labour and controversial incentives for the construction industry.
With polls suggesting Five Star has the support of less than 15 per cent of the electorate compared with a peak of 33 per cent in 2018, analysts say few of its remaining lawmakers are eager to trigger early elections at this point.
But Conte’s political machinations — and his attempts to criticise the government from within the coalition — point to the kind of drama that analysts say will become ever more frequent as next year’s elections draw closer.
Daniele Albertazzi, a professor of politics at the University of Surrey, said the populist Five Star and Matteo Salvini’s League were trying to position themselves for the coming contest with the rightwing Brothers of Italy, the only Italian political party to remain outside Draghi’s coalition and which polls show is now Italy’s most popular.
“There is this impossible game [Five Star and the League] are trying to play: to look responsible while bouncing back from a state of constant shrinking to which they have been relegated by Brothers of Italy,” he said.
But he dismissed the prospects of the immediate collapse of the government, as Italy awaits the next instalment of its EU Covid recovery funds. “Until Italy gets the second tranche of money from the EU, and we are beyond the summer, there is no way anybody is going to pull the plug,” he said.