Fearless Matteo Salvini’s threat to the EU establishment
In Italy and beyond, far-right populists’ ambition is to destroy the bloc from within
The EU faces two existential challenges: one from Donald Trump and one from Matteo Salvini, the leader of Italy’s far-right League. The threat posed by the US president is obvious, direct and brutal.
Trade tariffs for European cars will probably happen. The EU is paying a price for its over-dependence on the US as an absorber of export surpluses and for external security.
But the threat posed by Mr Salvini may be more potent if not quite so direct. Since he agreed to join a coalition with the Five Star Movement, he made two politically cunning decisions: the first was to suspend the talk about an Italian euro exit. The second is to use his role as interior minister as a bully pulpit with terrifying success.
Italy is playing a good-cop, bad-cop game with the EU. Mr Salvini is the bad cop. The good cop is Giuseppe Conte, Italy’s prime minister. He got a bad deal from the European Council, which agreed a few minor measures well short of what he demanded. The EU committed itself to setting up refugee camps inside its external borders and will devote more resources to protecting the periphery. And boats from non-governmental organisations will find it harder to pick up refugees.
But Mr Conte did not get anywhere with Italy’s central demand to reform the Dublin regulation — the rules that assign responsibility for refugees to the first EU country of arrival. Mr Salvini reacted with scepticism to the outcome of the summit, not surprisingly. The crisis is not over. All the difficult decisions on immigration have yet to be taken.
For the EU’s populists, this is fertile breeding ground. One of the reasons the leftist Greek insurrection against the EU’s establishment failed in 2015 was a lack of allies. The populists of the right have a different strategy. They work from inside the EU by forming alliances. Their ambition is to take over the EU institutions, and destroy the EU from within. Mr Salvini has his eyes set on the European elections in May 2019 and his chances look good.
It is possible that the main centre-left and the centre-right groups in the European Parliament will be swept away by two challengers. One of them could be a new pro-European liberal group, led by Emmanuel Macron, French president. The other would be an assorted group of populists and nationalists. They could stage a reverse takeover of the European Peoples’ party, the centre-right group. Or huddle together in a separate European party. Either way, they will find ways to assert their influence.
One often hears the argument that the populists in Italy, Austria and Bavaria have incompatible interests. The Germans want to send refugees back to Italy. The Italians want to dump theirs on Germany. And Austria does not want immigrants to pass through in either direction.
But the reference to competing interests misses the more important point that the populists are united in their wish to renationalise policy. This could happen in two ways. They might win the European elections, giving them a say over the next Commission president and a hand on the levers of power in the EU’s institutions. Or the centrists might capitulate and agree to a partial re-nationalisation of immigration policy, with all the negative implication this would have for open borders. A comprehensive EU-wide migration policy would be the best solution of all. But it is the least likely outcome, nevertheless.
I also expect that Italy, with Mr Salvini as back seat driver, will become more assertive in other areas and challenge Franco-German dominance in all aspects of EU policy. In the past, Italy was driven by fear of isolation. The country often agreed to legislation that was against the national interest. Examples of this self-sacrifice include the rules underpinning the European Stability Mechanism or the bank recovery and resolution directive.
What makes Mr Salvini’s threat to the EU’s established order so potent is his fearlessness. He is the first modern Italian politician without an emotional need to be among friends in Davos or Brussels. And while the more experienced EU leaders managed to ensnare the relatively inexperienced Mr Conte, the political reality is that Mr Salvini can pull the plug on the coalition at any time. He will probably wait until after next year’s European elections.
Remember that Italy is the country where the EU’s two crises come together — immigration and eurozone. A majority of Italians still support the EU, but Euroscepticism is rising. The EU will need to deliver solutions to both problems, not just paper over the cracks as it did last week.
The trouble with the EU is that its stability depends on the likes of Mr Salvini and Mr Trump never coming to power. It risks becoming the Weimar Republic of our times — a construction fit only for a temperate political climate.