The Italian bluffs on the Mes
What really happens in the government majority on the Mes. Damato's Scratches
The trick is there but it shows. And it is not gratifying for the government not wrongly featured on the front page of the Republic with a headline that laments its divisions and contrasts it with the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella: a government moreover at the beginning of a path that would like to last five years, as much as the duration of the legislature that came out of the polls on September 25, and above all innovative, according to the promises of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. This is the trick of the ESM, an acronym for what in Italy we call the European Stability Mechanism but which in Luxembourg, where it is based, is called the European Stability Mechanism , summarized in the acronym ESM, set up ten years ago with 700 billion euros, of which 125 on the Italian side, to help EU countries in difficulty. It is no coincidence that it was once called the State-saving Fund, modified after the controversies that erupted over the criteria with which it was applied to deal with the Greek crisis.
On this blessed or cursed "financial institution", as the experts call it, there were only two left in Europe to object and resist ratification: Germany and Italy. In Germany, exceptions of sovereign unconstitutionality were raised, so to speak, which led to the ruling finally arrived from the High Court, which did not recognize the feared impediments or inconveniences. At this point, only the Italian assent is missing.
Urged by the European shareholders, the Meloni government did not consider it possible to pronounce itself because two of the parties that make it up – that of Meloni herself, who sided against it when she was in opposition, and the League, when she was part of the first government of Giuseppe Conte, with the grillini – remained firm to the opposition felt for too many constraints, controls and costs deriving from access to aid.
We defer to Parliament, the Prime Minister and the (League's) Minister of Economy agreed and essentially said, who added the recommendation for a "broad and in-depth" debate. Which can now only happen in the next year, as the remaining time of this 2022 is occupied by the examination of the state budget.
The trick, which I mentioned at the beginning, lies in the fact that those concerned expect a positive vote expressed by the parliamentary groups behind which are parties that in the government do not believe they can and should pronounce themselves in this sense.
On the other hand, it would also be politically and numerically impossible, especially in the Senate, to adopt a favorable position with a majority other than that of the centre-right or right-centre government. Whose position is therefore, to say the least, Byzantine: certainly not up to the pride with which the celebrations of the " brothers of Italy " are concluding in Rome for the tenth birthday of their political formation, which took off with results or evaluations electoral numbers from a telephone area code and since 25 September at the top of the ranking of Italian parties.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/i-bluff-italiani-sul-mes/ on Sat, 17 Dec 2022 08:27:30 +0000.