Hush, work Draghi

Words can cost a fortune in economic communication.

Mario Draghi, Italy 's

prime minister and president of the ECB, knows better than anyone: his famous

Whatever it takes

(Whatever it takes)

he saved a whole currency in 2011. Perhaps that is why his biggest defenders try to justify him now, he has not yet been exposed to a press conference or barely spoke in public in a country accustomed in recent years to political bombardment on social networks.

The new Executive has decided that it will communicate only the facts, nothing more.

And it is true that some things have changed after one month of his mandate, especially in the vaccination plan.

Also collaterally in the organization of the two main parties in Parliament (Democratic Party, PD, and 5 Star Movement, M5S), which have paid the price of a crisis with the new leadership commissioned by two former prime ministers.

But others, the fans of the former Executive slip these days, recalls the same music of the Conte Government.

Draghi, 73 years old and the sixth consecutive prime minister of Italy since Silvio Berlusconi who has not left the polls (before Mario Monti, Enrico Letta, Matteo Renzi, Paolo Gentiloni and Conte himself), is an agile and precise communicator .

There were real fans of the press conferences of the European Central Bank.

There were even those who set an alarm on a Thursday a month, as a high Spanish diplomat recalls, to see them for pure enjoyment.

This Friday, in his appearance before the media at a vaccination center, Draghi showed signs of that ability, allowing himself to joke, after a

paradinha

in full speech, with the amount of Anglicisms that his compatriots use.

But the new prime minister, who will be accompanied throughout his term by the suspected technocrat, follows a month later without a clear political image or a single exposure to the press.

In a recent meeting with Italian agencies, his new spokesperson spoiled the media's very Italian inclination to decipher his humor.

"Newspapers and agencies should not interpret the sentiments of the President of the Council."

The problem is that they don't have much else.

The former president of the ECB arrived to bury three years of populism with the cold steel of technocracy and a cabinet strategically guided in key positions by men and women oblivious to the noise of Parliament.

The paradox is that some measures taken so far, the most significant, are reminiscent of moments in the recent past.

Draghi objected in his first European appointment to send 13 million vaccines to Africa.

He then blocked the departure to Australia of a batch of the domestically manufactured AstraZeneca company.

“Italians first”, he could have said paraphrasing the leader of the League, Matteo Salvini, delighted with these decisions.

"Yes, but in this case it was 'Europeans first', because it was done in agreement with the community partners," says a PD source.

Then, to make matters worse for Conte fans, he commissioned consulting firm McKinsey to review part of the Recovery Plan, something that was highly reminiscent of what the position cost the former prime minister when he wanted to entrust his governance to a group of experts.

"They said it was the Draghi revolution and, at times, it looks like Conte III," ironically sources from the M5S.

The expectations of a break with the previous government were very high.

50.8% of Italians, according to a Euromedia poll for

La Stampa

last Saturday, claim it.

And a month is a short time to draw conclusions, the majority of the Executive agree.

It has already been able to carry out a first reform of the administration (with an average salary increase for officials of 107 euros).

But the reality is that the room for maneuver has been short, points out the political scientist Giovanni Orsina.

“The discontinuity with Conte has not been very great so far.

And that is what citizens see.

The confinement could also have been decreed by the previous prime minister.

And the use of the decrees or the colored distinctions by regions have not changed that much either.

But in the management of the pandemic, Draghi will not be able to introduce great discontinuity, because from the beginning a different thing had to be done with the traces and the entire system.

At this point, there is no time to implement alternative mechanisms, you can only close everything, ”he points out.

The claimed break with Conte, Orsina qualifies, is based so far on two main axes.

First, the relationship with Europe, where Draghi has his own and influential voice.

Many see in his mandate, just when Angela Merkel will step aside and Emmanuel Macron will have to think about a long French electoral campaign, an opportunity to mark the step in the EU.

“At the last European summit he strongly criticized [European Commission President Ursula] Von der Leyen.

And it has credibility.

The impression in Italy is that Draghi makes us stronger, even if the results are scarce ”, he insists.

The other element has been the fight to accelerate the vaccination campaign.

Draghi, who has lost two points of public confidence in his first month - according to a Demos poll for

La Repubblica

last Saturday - has made this issue a priority.

Upon his arrival, the commissioner in charge of managing the pandemic, Domenico Arcuri (the Spanish counterpart Fernando Simón), was dismissed and a military man was placed in charge: General Francesco Paolo Figliuolo

,

who has the objective of finishing the vaccination this summer.

It also modified the structure of the Civil Protection and eliminated the figure of sole coordinator, linking it to the Chigi Palace.

The problem is that Arcuri, like Simon still is, also functioned as a lightning rod.

And now the electric shocks will go directly to the president of the Council of Ministers.

The hardest thing will be to keep the majority partners together.

At the moment there are no cracks, except in some skeptics of the M5S.

Stefano Ceccanti, PD deputy and constitutional expert, believes that "no one has the magic wand to solve all problems and some limits are linked to the European strategy with vaccines."

“The most important of all is the vaccination plan.

In addition, there has been a change in the relationship between Parliament and the Government, because the decree law has been passed, which is more respectful than the decrees of the president [a modality that does not pass through the Council of Ministers and should not be transformed into law in Parliament].

The new government has also pushed the PD and the M5S to redefine themselves, entrusting both to former prime ministers.

But the PD must vindicate with force its harmony with the Draghi agenda ”, he points out.

A month is a very short time.

But the mandate of the new prime minister, marked by the horizon of the election of the next president of the Republic in February 2022, is expected short.

Draghi will have to choose precisely the reforms that he wants to carry out (Justice, Treasury, School or Public Administration) and try to shield them while parliamentary cohesion lasts.

The truce between the rest of the parties, now dislodged by events, will last as long as they take to rearm themselves and to perceive the aroma of elections.

Four former prime ministers leading parties

The arrival of Mario Draghi to the presidency of the Council of Ministers has also had collateral effects on the parties that have supported his appointment.

The 5-Star Movement, orphaned of a leader for more than a year, when Luigi Di Maio resigned from these functions, has been entrusted to Giuseppe Conte to pilot its new transformation.

The Democratic Party, which blindly supported the appointment of Draghi and then plunged into a war to secure positions in the new Executive, has been entrusted to Enrico Letta after the resignation of its last secretary, Nicola Zingarettti.

The change, which has been ratified in the Assembly, confirms a scenario in which four of the main parties that support Draghi could be led by former prime ministers: Silvio Berlusconi (Forza Italia), Giuseppe Conte (5 Star Movement), Matteo Renzi (Italia Viva) and Enrico Letta (PD).

A panorama never seen until now in a country conducive to the return of its heads of government.