The Draghi Government, a shooting star in the darkness of Italian politics

The Government of Mario Draghi has been the 67th of the Italian Republic, which was born in 1946 after the fall of Mussolinian fascism.

Among so many governments, it shines like a star, especially among those of the Second Republic, which began in 1994 and which I have experienced more closely.

In a year and a half (from February 13, 2021 to July 21, 2022), Draghi has governed with a wide and disparate group of parties that practically the only thing they had in common, when it was formed, is that they did not want to go to the elections… immediately;

that is, the paralysis of the lowest common denominator was what was expected.

Not with Draghi, who has done at least three things.

First, in the midst of the covid pandemic and taking advantage of the Next Generation EU fund, it has been able to activate the Italian economy by launching its Recovery and Resilience Plan, which is not only the best endowed (131.5 billion euros; 68.9 billion in aid and 122,600 in loans), but, thanks to its experts, it is possibly the most ambitious and best formulated.

This has also meant starting a set of reforms: the judicial system, public administration and, in part, the labor market.

Second, after many years of irrelevance, it has regained the leadership that corresponds to Italy as the third largest country in the EU, playing a key role when it has faced its biggest crisis since the Treaty of Rome: the Russian invasion of Ukraine ( and has frozen, with his authority, the Putinian whims of some of his government partners).

Third, it is not only what he has done in a short time, but also how he has done it.

In the era in which governing has become tweeting and discussing insulting, he has put government plans on the table (on the pandemic, the Recovery and Resilience Plan, defense, etc.) and has given confidence to his ministers and collaborators .

Most have corresponded to him, which in some cases has been a real metamorphosis (Luigi di Maio and others).

As he has already done in the European Central Bank, he has done the same in the Italy of verbiage: he has preferred doing to talking.

But it has been a shooting star, which as such appears from the darkness, from the darkness of Italian politics.

From the loss of support from a minority party (Italia Viva by Matteo Renzi) to a directionless government (number 66, the second by Giuseppe Conte).

But the Italian darkness has a mechanism so that government crises do not become state crises: the prescient intervention of the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella.

It is no coincidence that the reform of the Italian pension system (to be done in Spain, and not even considered in its recovery and resilience plan) was carried out by the Government of Mario Monti (2011-2013), engendered with the same mechanism by the president George Napolitano.

And like a shooting star it disappears in the dark.

In a darkness that recalls the descent, in consecutive circles, through Dante's inferno.

In which we first meet Professor Conte (yes, the one with Conte I and Conte II), who, abandoned by Di Maio (Minister of Foreign Affairs and former leader of the 5 Star Movement) and other repentant ones, disguises himself as a leftist green and says to Draghi: "We will never give weapons or burn garbage."

But the descent does not end here;

Further down, Matteo Salvini awaits us and, of course, Silvio Berlusconi, who, attracted by Meloni's siren songs ("I'm Giorgia, I'm mamma, I'm Italian"), betray Draghi to go with her to the promised and promising elections.

Y,

when from outside the republican clamor still resonates "let's make the alternative coalition of reformists and center-left with Draghi's program as a banner" and the polls say that he can beat Meloni & Boys, we reach the lower circle and find Carlo Calenda, author of the proclamation, this time accompanied by the old devil Renzi (more devil than old);

they are writing an email to Enrico Letta (leader of the, possibly most voted, Democratic Party and whom Renzi deposed in 2014, when he was prime minister

by Napolitano, following the mechanism, in 2013), which says: "We are liberal reformists and, from this hell, you, Mrs. Bonino and others, smell of the center-left".

Here ends the descent into the darkness of this Dantean hell... for now.

Why is no one denying that the center-right coalition is going to win, headed by the leader of the most voted party, Giorgia Meloni, and number 68 is going to be the first Italian government with a woman as prime minister?

Due to the relatively new electoral law —called Rosatellum—, 60% of deputies and senators are elected by a proportional system with closed party lists and 40% by a majority system in which, logically, larger coalitions have greater possibilities.

The latter, together with a complex system of allocating residual votes at the national level and between electoral districts, means that the Calenda-Renzi move has sunk the

Not so much to give practically certainty to the electoral result as because, with this expectation, we are already witnessing a campaign in which, on the one hand, the center-right coalition appears to be united on 15 points (unknown as of today), when In fact, it is not, and against it each coalition wants to present its own profile (even if it is to retain minority partners, such as the PD, putting the legalization of medical marijuana as one of its eight priorities).

There is no longer talk of the reforms that Italy needs (some of them committed to in the Recovery and Resilience Plan), but, once again, returning to the deep darkness of fascism and communism.

This is worrying in Europe (while Putin smiles, which he only does in private).

What should concern you more?

That the center-right win with a sufficient majority to be able to change the Constitution without a referendum.

This is not what the polls predict, but if it were to happen, Meloni has spoken clearly: the current system would be changed for a presidential one (similar to the French system, but possibly with even more power for the president).

Why Frenchify the system is to be feared?

Because, as I pointed out, within its obscurity, the current system allows the institution of the State —the President of the Republic— to be able to act with a long-term vision of the State, particularly in times of crisis (which it cannot do the King in Spain), while, since the old Christian Democracy and the old Communist Party disappeared,

Italian parties have rarely been guided by long-term state policies (rhetoric aside).

Would a melonian president be different?

And in the most likely scenario that the center-right coalition wins without such a majority, what would be best?

For the center-right, that Meloni does not have to depend on Salvini and Berlusconi.

For the other party, let it be a clear victory, as opposition, for the center-left coalition and, within it, for the PD.

In a word, that our characters in hell stay there.

And, the most difficult thing: that, with the greater responsibility that gives a clear result, neither in Italy nor in Europe this means a confrontation, which could become a rupture.

Ramon Marimon

is a professor of Economics at the Pompeu Fabra University, the Barcelona School of Economics, the CREi in Barcelona and the European University Institute of Florence, and a contributor to Agenda Pública.

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