26 April 2023

Fondation Robert Schuman: Giorgia Meloni's first six months

On several fronts however great uncertainty remains. They concern the implementation of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), European alliances and, above all, on the domestic front, the management of immigration...

How is Italy faring under the leadership of Giorgia Meloni, the first woman president of the Council? As of 22 April 2023, six months have passed since the formation of the new government led by the so-called "right-of-centre" coalition composed of Giorgia Meloni's Fratelli d'Italia (FdI), Matteo Salvini's Lega and Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia. It is interesting to observe the "experiment" with this far right (as described by the Financial Times) which, for the first time since the Second World War, finds itself at the head of a founding country of the European Union and also amidst a new war.
The election of Giorgia Meloni on 25 September 2022 confirmed the rapid reshaping of the Italian political landscape. With the erosion of the consensus held by the Lega and the Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S) and the decline of Forza Italia, a space opened up for the ascendency of a conservative right-wing party led by the former Minister for Youth in the Berlusconi government, Giorgia Meloni. Elected with a pro-NATO stance and claiming to be pro-European, after years of pointing the finger at Brussels' technocracy and asserting her closeness to the political and social model represented by Viktor Orban's Hungary, Giorgia Meloni is now trying to make her mark in Europe.
The first 100 days of her government were positively welcomed by the foreign press (The Economist, Times). The Italian Council President's consistency with her Atlanticist commitment and dialogue with the European Union was noticed as early as 3 November, when she made her first trip outside Italy to Brussels, where she met with Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. On 12 December 2022, the Italian Senate voted in favour of continuing military support to Ukraine in 2023.
On the domestic front, however, six months after the government's inception, consensus with the executive is beginning to deteriorate, falling from 50% in October to 39% in March, according to a an SWG poll for the Italian TV channel La7.
On several fronts however great uncertainty remains. They concern the implementation of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), European alliances and, above all, on the domestic front, the management of immigration, a subject that has re-entered the scene in the run-up to the 2024 European elections.

I. The Economic Front

a - The Recovery Plan

With an overwhelming level of debt, which stood at €2,772 billion at the end of February, 144.4% of GDP by the end of 2022, and a dependence on financial markets, Giorgia Meloni has had to make a forced European conversion. Italy needs Brussels and its funds to cope with rising energy prices (gas) and to implement the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, a programme whereby the government must manage the European funds of the NextgenerationEU plan, i.e. the economic recovery and revitalisation tool set up by the European Union to compensate for the losses caused by the Covid-19 pandemic[1].
Drafted by the Draghi government and approved by the European Commission in June/July 2021, the Italian NRRP is structured around six objectives and hundreds of interventions in almost all sectors of public life. To secure the €191.5 billion in funding, of which €68 billion has already been received, Italy must meet several quarterly deadlines, over several years, from 2021 to 2026. Despite the urgency of this programme, the Meloni government has experienced setbacks that have jeopardised its completion.
In its March 2023 report the Italian Court of Auditors points out that "more than half of the measures affected by the funding are running late or are still at an early project stage." The insecure status of civil servants, sluggish bureaucracy, the lack of infrastructure and adequate technical staff all contribute to slowing down the implementation of the plan. "The way in which staff dedicated to the NRRP have been recruited with unstable contracts have made it quite difficult for administrations to guarantee the operational continuity of structures that, on the contrary, would need a certain framework of resources for the entire duration of the Plan", reads the Court's report.
The Minister for European Affairs, Raffaele Fitto, responsible for coordinating the programme, admitted this: "As far as the NRRP is concerned, we need to be clear: certain interventions between now and 30 June 2026 cannot be implemented"
Giorgia Meloni has suggested that the Draghi government may be responsible for the current delay in the NRRP deadlines, a situation that casts a shadow on the current executive[2]. This comes despite the flexibility granted by the European Commission, which at the end of March granted a third additional month for the verification of the fifty-five objectives included in the NRRP in the second half of 2022, thus postponing the third aid tranche of 19 billion. By the end of April, the government will have to modify some of the NRRP projects, ranging from justice to competition, that are of concern to the Commission in a bid to catch up with the systemic reforms.
However, the postponements requested by the Italian government are not viable in Italy's current economic configuration, with a growth and debt crisis coupled with high inflation. To date Italy has only spent 6 % of the funds received: of the €191.5 billion NRRP, only 23 billion had been spent by the end of 2022...

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