Italian News: Populist Policies and Russian Interference

           The populist Italian Government last week increased welfare benefits in the form of public income and delayed for a year the implementation of the requirement that nursery school students be immunized, despite a measles outbreak.

            Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, the leader of the largest center-right party, has expressed principled conservative and free market criticisms of the populist Government, composed of a somewhat leftwing, but heterodox anti-establishment party and a far-right anti-immigrant party, despite his party’s continued alliance with the latter in regional and local elections, after they had campaigned together as a bloc in the March parliamentary elections.  He expects the fractious coalition Government, which enjoys only a slim majority in Parliament, not to last long.  Berlusconi late last week encouraged the far-right leader, who is Deputy Premier and Interior Minister, to continue the Turin-to-Lyon high-speed train, which has been under construction.  The project between Italy and France is opposed in Italy by socialists, anarchists, environmentalists and the anti-establishment ruling party.

           Meanwhile, Italian prosecutors are investigating Russian attacks through an Internet troll campaign on the Italian President after his rejection of one of the populist coalition’s proposed Cabinet ministers late May.  Italian Neo-Nazis are also being investigated for recruiting volunteers for the pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine.  The authoritarian and kleptocratic Russian Federation regime of Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014, in violation of Russia’s treaty with Ukraine in which it agreed to respect Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity.  The populist Italian Government opposes the European Union’s sanctions on Russia.