How Italy
turned Euroskeptic
Italy’s
crisis generation prepares to vote for the first time.
By NAOMI O'LEARY 12/19/17, 4:00 AM CET
Beppe
Grillo’s 5Star Movement is forecast to win a quarter of the votes or more
Davide
Ruggeri, an 18-year-old high school student in Rome, first began to notice the
effects of the migration crisis in his early teens. It was a time when North
Africa was in turmoil. Thousands of people were fleeing in makeshift boats to
Italy’s coasts and moving up through the rail network, in search of better
lives in the wealthier countries of Northern Europe. Some made it to Ruggeri’s
neighborhood on the eastern outskirts of Rome, where they eked out a living in
squats and the black economy.
The son of
a teacher and an IT technician, Ruggeri holds the view — widespread in Italy —
that the country has been abandoned by the European Union and forced to deal
with the crisis alone: bearing the brunt without adequate funds to deal with
it, disadvantaged by EU rules that asylum seekers must claim refuge in the
country they first arrive in, irrespective of whether they hoped to travel on
to another EU country.
Asked
whether he feels European, he hesitates.
“It’s a
really good question,” Ruggeri pauses. “Yes. I feel like a European citizen
because we are in the EU, and we are one of the founding members. But at this
moment I don’t see good things from Europe, because of the problems with
immigration. They are helping us very little. There’s an emergency, and it
seems like the only thing that’s important to them is money.”
Ruggeri is
a member of an Italian generation that has known only economic stagnation, and
which will head to the ballot box for the first time in a general election next
spring. They were born around the same time as the euro — 1999 — and are now
old enough to vote. They’ve seen nothing but political and economic crises
since their childhoods, and politicians apparently unable to fix them.
The
experiences of this euro generation are one of the reasons behind the
widespread public disillusionment with Italian politics. They also help explain
why Italy has gone from being one of the most enthusiastic members of the EU to
one of its most disaffected — and why the country stands a not-so-little risk
of handing the reins of government over to a Euroskeptic leader.
This
outcome would upturn the EU’s political order and possibly reignite the
financial bonfire that the Continent’s leaders have only recently managed to
bring back under control.
“In my
life, it seems that it has always been like this,” says 19-year-old Marialuce
Giardini, a Milan native who has finished school but is not yet in work or
university. “As long as I can remember there has been talk of crisis, and about
how Italy needs to fix its economy.”
“A couple
of years ago it seemed like perhaps it might get better, but I suppose it’s
something that happens slowly,” she adds. “I can’t remember a time when the
situation of Italy was good.”
Disillusioned
youth
In
countries like France, the U.K., Germany and the Netherlands, polls show a
notable generational difference in attitudes toward the EU. Young people tend
to feel more positively toward the bloc, while older people tend to hold less favorable
opinions.
In Italy,
the trend is reversed. Voters aged under 45 are significantly more likely to
think Italy is on the wrong track (71 percent, compared to half of voters over
45), according to a study conducted by Benenson Strategy Group in October.
The study
found that if Italy were to hold a referendum on EU membership, 51 percent of
voters under 45 would vote to leave, while 46 percent would vote to remain. In
contrast, respondents over 45 supported staying in the bloc by 68 percent to 26
percent.
Borre
Younger
voters’ unhappiness with the EU came from a sense that what’s good for the bloc
comes at Italy’s expense. Strong majorities among the young said that the
migrant crisis showed the EU could not be counted on to help Italy with its biggest
challenges. What it showed, they concluded, is that the EU only cared about
itself.
There’s one
thing young Italian voters have in common with their peers in other European
countries: Less likely to vote, they are rarely courted by politicians, making
them less interested in politics. But even then, in Italy the problem is
exacerbated by demography. With nearly half of the Italian population older
than 45, the young are outnumbered.
“For sure,
the people who are in power now are really old. They are very removed from what
we need now, and the needs of the future,” says Federico Borre, a 19-year-old
from the Aosta valley who recently began studying at the University of Geneva
in Switzerland. “Young people definitely believe they are cut off from politics.”
Asked what
major events he recalls living through, Borre reels off the prime ministers the
country has churned through in the last six years. “Berlusconi, Monti, Letta,
Renzi …” he says. “No one was able to have a full mandate. The governments were
changing rapidly.”
Borre’s
generation is the most educated in Italy, but it also has the EU’s highest
percentage of young people not in education, training or work — almost a third,
according to Eurostat. Youth unemployment is the highest after Greece and Spain.
For those with jobs, conditions are highly lopsided: a young army of precarious
workers that can only dream of one day being granted the iron-clad contracts,
pensions and protections of their older colleagues.
It’s a
generation that thinks it will be worse off than their parents. Eight in 10,
according to a survey of 16- to 30-year-olds conducted by the European
Commission, believe young people have been excluded from a good economic and
social life by the economic crisis.
These
conditions have led to a long-running brain drain that has accelerated in
recent years as young people — often the most ambitious and talented — seek
better prospects abroad: a loss of Italy’s most cosmopolitan voices that
further reduces the group that could introduce generational change.
Borre, the
son of a teacher and a retired health worker, describes the EU in positive
terms as an institution that allowed him to travel and learn English, and that
invested in infrastructure in his region.
But like
many internationally minded Italians, Borre does not see a future for himself
in Italy.
“At the
moment I have no plans to go back,” he says. “I’m more interested in the wider
world.”
Euro
bashing
lmost as
soon as the first euro notes and coins began changing hands in Italy in 2002,
the currency became the focus of generalized economic grievance. Ordinary
Italians began grumbling that prices had gone up while wages stayed the same.
Politicians tapped into this early: The Northern League called for a referendum
on the return of the lira as early as 2005. As prime minister, Silvio
Berlusconi used international events to play up friction with Germany and
appeal to Italian pride.
Fast
forward to 2017, and the euro and the EU have been turned into rhetorical
punching bags by politicians of all stripes — from left to right, regionalist
to neo-fascist. Conveniently, they shift blame for Italy’s problems outside the
country.
Overall,
just 39 percent of Italians believe the country has benefited on balance from
being in the EU: the lowest level in the bloc, according to a recent Kantar
survey by the European Parliament.
It’s a
striking turnaround for a country that was once among the most enthusiastic
about integration: the birthplace of EU founding father Altiero Spinelli and of
the EU’s precursor, the European Economic Community.
The shift
is reflected in the platforms and promises of the political parties that will
compete in the next election, due before May 20, 2018. The 5Star Movement,
which wants a referendum on euro membership, is forecast to win a quarter of
the votes or more. The anti-immigrant, Euroskeptic Northern League has the
support of another 16 percent.
It’s also
reflected in how young people are casting their ballots.
In a vote
last year that was widely seen in Italy as a blow against the establishment,
Italians aged 18-34 voted in large numbers against center-left former Prime
Minister Matteo Renzi’s electoral reform, siding with a No campaign championed
by the 5Star Movement and the Northern League.
Anger in
the heartlands
ario Dedi,
a 20-year-old first-year politics student at the University of Trieste, dreams
of one day entering parliament. Born to a seamstress and a truck driver, his
first taste of public service was as a student representative on the council of
his school in Portogruaro, a town in northeast Italy.
The
position meant he could read his school’s financial accounts.
“The cuts
to education were clear,” Dedi says. “The school wasn’t able to cover its
expenses.” It introduced a voluntary tax for parents to be able to keep going.
Expected funds from the central government did not arrive.
“I think
that my generation has been failed in many respects,” Dedi says.
Dedi
Asked what
the most pressing issue should be for the next government, Dedi replies
“immigration.” He describes attitudes to immigrants changing among the people
he knows in Veneto, in Italy’s northeast, and said politicians needed to take
action or the results could be dangerous.
“Politics
isn’t just what political parties talk about,” Dedi says. “It’s what you hear
between people when they speak about politics in the bar.”
“I believe
that immigration could endanger Italian democracy, because it is causing
revolutionary and even violent feelings in the working-class areas, in the
stomach of the country,” he said.
A supporter
of the 5Star Movement, Dedi views Italy’s adoption of the euro as a historic
mistake that shackled the Italian economy. He views EU rules on spending as
excessively punitive.
“I
absolutely don’t feel like a European citizen,” Dedi said.
There is
some evidence that the euro has benefited stronger economies like Germany while
making Italy less competitive. Eurostat data shows Italians have become
steadily poorer in terms of what they can buy since 2005.
Beppe
Grillo’s 5Star Movement is forecast to win a quarter of the votes or more
But the reasons for that are not clear-cut:
There was already economic stagnation before the euro, and indigenous
structural problems are also at least partly responsible. Even if the euro has
damaged Italy, it is not clear that leaving the currency — almost certain to be
an economically traumatic event — would fix matters.
Yet
politically, these nuances may not matter. Criticism of the euro and the EU
reliably resonates with part of the electorate.
It is
unclear what policies Euroskeptics would adopt if their rhetoric helps elevate
them into positions of power. Even the most anti-EU parties have been
inconstant in their messaging, dialing back demands to exit the EU outright to
mere calls for reforms, as Brexit tests out what ending membership really
means.
In recent
months, the 5Stars, the Northern League and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia
have all settled on the idea of calling for an alternative, parallel currency
to the euro. As a policy, it’s economically dubious and potentially
destabilizing, but it taps into the national unhappiness while skirting the radicalism
of dumping the currency altogether.
What is
clear is that dissatisfaction with the EU and the euro will feature prominently
in Italy’s election, and potentially in many elections to come, as the
country’s long economic stagnation drags on and Italy’s crisis generation
continues to grow.
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