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Trucker
blockades in southern Italy ramp up pressure on Meloni
The prime
minister has vowed to break blockades, but has also offered relief to farmers
and fishermen over sky-high diesel costs.
October
22, 2026 6:52 pm CET
By Hannah
Roberts and Martina Sapio
ROME —
Roadblocks by truckers in southern Italy are exposing the limits of Prime
Minister Giorgia Meloni’s hardline approach toward protests, as she concedes
she will have to take a carrot-and-stick approach to demonstrators struggling
with soaring fuel costs.
The
demonstrations across the south are fast spiraling into a full-blown economic
crisis. Truck drivers and farmers protesting soaring diesel bills have blocked
highways, ports and distribution centers this week, leaving supermarket shelves
empty and petrol pumps dry. Airports in the south are also suffering from fuel
shortages.
After a
cabinet meeting on Thursday, the right-wing Meloni vowed to use a security
decree to clear the roadblocks, but also pledged to give financial relief to
farmers and fishermen crippled by the price of diesel.
Regarding
the decree, she said her government would not be “blackmailed by those who use
violence as an instrument of pressure.” But she cushioned that blow by
acknowledging that financial relief measures were needed to offer
"immediate responses, especially to workers, to people who are in
difficulty, to families."
With
elections expected in spring next year, the truckers’ protests threaten to
shift the political debate from immigration and crime to whether Italians can
afford to keep their businesses running.
Gaetano
Amato, a lawmaker from Naples for the populist left 5Star Movement, accused the
government of offering security measures instead of answers to the economic
grievances driving the protests.
“The
government has done nothing and is continuing to do nothing, because it is
basing everything on security decrees,” he told POLITICO.
Stefano
Orlacchio, president of the opposition center-left Democratic Party’s youth
wing in the southern region of Campania, also slammed the government’s response
as “an anti-southern attitude.”
“The
protests in the south aren’t being taken into consideration at all,” he told
POLITICO.
Diesel
squeeze
At the
heart of the revolt is a squeeze that truckers say they can no longer absorb.
Diesel prices in Italy have risen by about a third since the U.S. and Israeli
strikes on Iran began, and the cost of a long haul journey like Naples to Milan
has climbed with them.
Pasquale,
a truck driver with a Campania-based company, who asked POLITICO to withhold
his surname for fear of retaliation, said a trip’s profit had now shrunk
sharply once fuel, tolls and wages were covered, and that the extra cost was
working its way down the supply chain to supermarket shelves.
Far-right
Transport Minister Matteo Salvini of the League party, who posed in a truck cab
a few months ago, should “come spend a week with me and we’ll see how
comfortable it is,” Pasquale quipped.
While a
cap on fuel prices exists on paper, he added petrol stations had ignored it “in
these days of chaos.”
Beyond
fuel prices, Pasquale zeroed in on EU environmental rules that Italian
businesses struggle to comply with, even as cheaper foreign produce continues
to reach supermarket shelves. “How can you face something like that?” he asked.
The
Brussels-based International Road Transport Union has also appealed directly to
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen for help.
In a
letter sent on Thursday and seen by POLITICO, the group and its national member
associations said they did not support the blockades but warned that soaring
diesel prices were pushing operators to the brink, calling for extended EU
state aid and tougher rules on late payments from customers.
The
blockades hit hundreds of supermarkets and dozens of distribution centers,
according to retailers’ association Federdistribuzione. Fresh fruit, meat and
fish ran out within days, followed by other food products, leaving some shops
completely empty.
Carlo
Alberto Buttarelli, the association’s president, put the damage at “tens of
millions of euros,” with fresh food spoiling in trucks and warehouses. Supplies
were beginning to resume in Sicily and Calabria on Thursday, but disruption
remained in Campania.
No room
to maneuver
Meloni
has limited resources to offer relief. Italy remains subject to EU deficit
proceedings, constraining Rome's room for additional spending, while the
international instability driving fuel prices higher lies largely beyond her
control.
Amato
dismissed the announced support from the cabinet meeting on Thursday as money
that had already been promised.
While the
government’s reaction to last weekend's northern protests, which were hijacked
by masked gangs that looted shops and set fires, was to link the unrest to
immigration and deploy troops, the southern unrest is harder for Meloni to
handle because it demands concrete economic relief, said Marco Valbruzzi, a
researcher at the University of Naples Federico II.
Frustrated
voters could turn to the 5Star Movement, which has previously channeled
economic discontent in the south, or abstain from voting altogether.
The
protests could also weaken the appeal of early elections expected in April or
May next year. A winter of sustained protests would give Meloni a reason to
wait until autumn 2027, hoping for an ease in international instability and
improved fiscal flexibility.
If
economic grievances dominate the campaign, “she is playing an electoral game on
a field that she cannot control,” Valbruzzi said.
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