The Italian Rightwing Coalition Government Has Taken Office

Italy’s new coalition government was sworn into office yesterday after last month’s election gave the majority of seats in the Italian Parliament to the right wing bloc of parties, who collectively had won a plurality of the votes. It is the most right-wing Italian government since the Fascist dictatorship of Benito Mussolini during the Second World War, before Italians opted afterward to end the monarchy and become a constitutional representative parliamentary republic. The governing coalition is led by a party with roots from a party formed after the war by Fascists, but new Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has striven to reassure that it has cast off its fascist ideology, despite some Fascist nostalgia among its candidates and officials. She has provided strong reassurances of Italy’s membership in the European Union, despite her criticism of the EU, and of the alliance with the United States and membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. And given her coalition partners’ sympathy for Russian tyrant Vladimir Putin, the ex-Soviet intelligence officer trying to restore the Soviet Union, Meloni has insisted on continued Italian support for sanctions on Russia, despite the economic challenges they necessarily create, and military aid to Ukraine to defend it and Europe against Russian aggression. The two smaller coalition parties are both represented by Vice Presidents of the Council of Ministers, the executive “cabinet” that votes on decrees, as well as in several ministries, whose heads have seats in the cabinet. One coalition partner is the Trumpist anti-migrant League and the other is a center-right party, Forza Italia, founded by former Prime Minister and now Senator Silvio Berlusconi. The conservative Forza Italia VP is also Foreign Minister, which sends a strong signal of support for NATO and Ukraine, as well as to the EU, as he had been an EU official. The new Government must continue to address the Coronavirus pandemic and continuing the reforms necessary to receive more EU funds for pandemic recovery, as well as the energy and economic crisis caused by economic recovery and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Italy is a vital ally of the U.S.