Right wing election victory: Italian disease is back

The electoral victory of the Italian right-wing alliance around the "post-fascist" Giorgia Meloni poses a threat to the euro and the EU's unity against Putin.

Right wing election victory: Italian disease is back

The electoral victory of the Italian right-wing alliance around the "post-fascist" Giorgia Meloni poses a threat to the euro and the EU's unity against Putin. If your government continues to drive up debt, the end of the euro is imminent.

By Italian standards, Giorgia Meloni's right-wing alliance got a stable majority to govern in Sunday's election. But that doesn't mean much when there are unreliable partners like the aged, ex-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (the one with "Bunga-Bunga"), who has been lifted beyond recognition, and Matteo Salvini. Salvini was once interior minister and hates the European Union, most foreigners and especially all refugees. At that time he stumbled on his vanity and a few beach parties at the wrong time, as sometimes happens in bella Italia.

So you could lean back and think: Well, then a really far-right woman as prime minister - and it won't be long enough for her to do any major damage. But be careful: That would be wrong thinking.

The Meloni government, if formed, will be looking for quick wins to cement the support it received in the election. And therein lies a great danger for the euro, our money, and for the unity of the European Union towards Vladimir Putin.

Salvini and Berlusconi are self-confessed Putin fans, and at least Salvini's party is said to have been financed from Russia. If they had their way, Russia could absorb larger parts of Ukraine undisturbed, as long as cheap gas would continue to be supplied. Meloni has said otherwise recently, but you don't believe her because she has already made many such turns.

Above all, Salvini and Berlusconi have also promised their voters the moon, including a doubling of pensions, which would completely ruin state finances. Meloni can't refuse all of these wishes from her male partners - but right now, in the crisis, they can only be financed with new debts. And the question is: will there be enough investors willing to lend their money to a far-right Italy by buying Italy's government bonds? If not, or only at an overwhelmingly high interest rate - then sooner or later the country is threatened with running out of money and the euro would be history. That was just what was missing.

That's not to say Giorgia Meloni is some sort of "voice of reason" to cheer for when wrestling with two very masculine Hallodri partners. Meloni is a "post-fascist," which means something like: Officially, she doesn't want anything to do with the Italian "Duce" and Hitler ally Benito Mussolini. But she would like to learn a thing or two from him and his fascist movement, for example the symbolism of blazing flames or the idea that Italy would be better governed if a president were largely in charge alone. In the European Union, this fits with the views of Viktor Orban or Poland's national-Catholic government. It is not for nothing that one of the mottos of Meloni's Brothers of Italy party is: "God, family, fatherland".

That's why the German government, among others, is very concerned that Italy, for the first time, will become a founding member of the European Union in the camp of those who want a completely different, much more conservative and nationally shaped Union - and give free rein to their contempt for the "Brussels bureaucrats". That's not good for the euro either, which Poland and Hungary didn't introduce in the first place.

But the real puzzle is how the Italians can first be big fans of the sober, conscientious, thrifty and uncompromising Mario Draghi as Prime Minister - and then give the majority to a group that stands for exactly the opposite. It's the "Italian disease" - and it's back now.