A difficult 2024 for Italy in Brussels

Perhaps there is a plan behind it, a strategy that has not been understood either in Italy or in Brussels by the EU partners, and in that case, it is fine. We are also part of the ranks of those who have not understood the pleasant innovation brought by Italy to the EU.

Next year looks difficult for Italy in Brussels after having spent 2023 getting acquainted this year with Giorgia Meloni’s government, composed of numerous personalities unknown in Brussels, the 26 partners of the EU, and European institutions.

The issue that remains incomprehensible to most is the ESM, the rescue mechanism. The Italian government of Giuseppe Conte signed its new statute. In the following months, 19 euro partners approved it, while Italy, which remained last, rejected it with a clear parliamentary vote. This approval was part, the premier had announced, of a “logic of package negotiations,” which also included the Stability and Growth Pact reform. It is unclear what went wrong as France and Germany found a formulation that suited everyone, including Italy, so it seemed that the deal was closed and that the ESM could pass. Instead, it was rejected just before Christmas, and Rome cannot use the tool in case of a financial or banking crisis. Because the ESM does not necessarily have to be used: it would be available (would be because, without Italy’s vote in the current formulation, no one can use it), and those who wanted to use it because they have a crisis they cannot deal with on their own could use it.

However, the ruling majority in Italy, unique among the 20 in the euro group, understood that the ESM was a rip-off for its citizens and, therefore, stopped it. It was not a move that pleased the partners, who also had worked to draft a Stability Pact that Italy could accept, which it did. Now, some say, maybe in 2024, the 19 will go it alone. If that happened, it would be a considerable humiliation for Italy, which would leave the leading group of the Union, the one that most advances amidst a thousand difficulties, toward a deeper and more useful financial integration.We would be left out and left behind. And with our credibility strongly questioned. In 2024, the NRRP issue will also take more and more shape. So far, Minister Raffaele Fitto has been good at negotiating the various installments in Brussels: plan revised, rearranged, approved, and money coming in. But now the issue comes out of the negotiations in Brussels and passes into the Italian public administration, which must know how to spend those resources. And this is where the real problems come in, because, so far, according to calculations, very little has been spent, too little. Considering that the plan was designed especially for Italy, which is the country that has taken the most resources of all, because it is the one with the most difficulties among the large economies if we do not manage to spend it all, to take advantage of this unique opportunity (on which much of our GDP for the next few years depends), this opportunity would become unrepeatable. It would become impossible to think of new “European bonds” that we could exploit in the future.

Then there are the European elections and the new Commission. In Italy, there has been much talk of the electoral gains of Fratelli d’Italia, and correctly so, which will be matched by the expected decline of League and Forza Italia parties. The party led by Antonio Tajani, however, as much as it may shrink, will remain part of the group that could remain the largest in Parliament, the European People’s Party, and will therefore have a decisive weight in the choices of the future majority. FdI and the League, on the other hand, even changing their mutual quantitative ratio, will remain in groups that, despite recent attempts to widen the majority to the right that quickly failed, will stay on the fringes of Parliament, with little or no influence. The Pd, whose electoral outcome appears uncertain at the moment, will, however, also remain part of the Party of European Socialists, the current second group, which aspires to become the first and which will, in any case, also be an influential element in the future majority. So, once again, the EPP and PSE will most likely be the pillars of Parliament, with Fi and Pd divided at home and often united in the EU. Giorgia Meloni then has to give her opinion on the next president of the European Commission. The game is still open, but with an obvious front-runner, Ursula von der Leyen, who is doing everything not to displease any big country, including Italy. Perhaps Meloni, therefore, in order not to find herself isolated, will have to support the confirmation of the German politician. In short, there will not be a revolution in Brussels led by Italy, which could perhaps reason about finding a less uncomfortable and more fruitful position for its interests. Hoping that, in the meantime, no bank goes belly up.