The Duran’s Alex Christoforou and Editor-in-Chief Alexander Mercouris discuss breaking news that Italian President Sergio Mattarella has given the green light to Giuseppe Conte, who resigned as prime minister last week, to form a new government coalition after the previous Italian government collapsed.
The Duran’s Alex Christoforou and Editor-in-Chief Alexander Mercouris examine how Italy has decided to defy the west and officially join China’s One Belt One Road initiative. Italy signed on to China’s “One Belt One Road” infrastructure plan on March 23rd, despite warning from the United States and the European Union.
For those who believe that Italy is heading for collapse, which will eventually bring down the EU project, will be bitterly disappointed.
While Italy did undergo a mini-crisis last week, it appears that a new government, with a willingness to work with Brussels, is the most pragmatic and likely outcome from recent elections in Italy.
The Five Star Movement and the Northern League agreed to form a coalition government that would have represented the two anti-EU parties which together won almost 50% of the vote in the parliamentary elections, and which have a majority in the lower house of the Italian Parliament the Chamber of Deputies.
There government formed represented the parties which won the parliamentary elections, and should have been allowed to take office and govern, but the European Union was not in agreement.
Years of neoliberal economic policies imposed by Brussels and by Italian politicians alike have devastated numerous industrial towns and the very fabric of Italian society, reports Attilio Moro. By Attilio Moro Special to Consortium News in Brussels Sesto San Giovanni,…Read more →
Before analysing what has just happened in Italy and discussing its likely consequences, it is necessary to say something about the fact of what has just happened.
Italy is supposed to be a parliamentary republic with the Prime Minister and the government accountable to the parliament.
As in other parliamentary republics the Italian President is supposed to be a figure above politics, whose primary function is to safeguard the constitution, which he is sworn to uphold. He is not supposed to meddle in day to day politics or to take on himself the leadership of the country.
The revolt of voters across the Western world has reached a high point in Europe.
The Five Star Movement and the League, two so-called “populist” political parties in Italy, are preparing to form a government after Wednesday’s appointment of a new prime minister following an election result that could directly challenge the foundations of the European Union.
Like other anti-system movements around Europe, the Italian parties are calling in particular for abandoning the neoliberal economic policies and speculative finance, which are hollowing out the middle class.
RT | March 6, 2018 One of the key people behind the policies that destabilized Libya and Syria, causing a flood of refugees to Europe, accused Russia of influencing the Italian elections after voters gave the cold shoulder to establishment parties. Russia’s utility as the universal scapegoat cannot be underestimated these days. A historically-separatist region […]
The Italian elections have resulted in the predicted swing against the centre-left pro-EU Democratic Party, the successor of Italy’s once mighty Communist Party – the party of Togliatti and Gramsci – and today the Party of outgoing Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni and former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.
From a position in 2008, when the Democratic Party won 37% of the vote in the parliamentary elections of that year, it fell to 25% of the vote in the elections of 2013, and has now fallen further to just 19% of the vote in the elections which have been held now.
Yesterday’s Italian election results have sent tremors through the bureaucratic maze of Brussels, as two populist EU skeptic parties the centerist-populist Five Star Movement (Movimento Cinque Stelle) and the right-wing nationalist Northern League (Lega Nord), managed impressive gains, with Five Star garnering the most popular votes during this election round.
