30/04/2014
Jorge del Palacio Martín. University Rey Juan Carlos
On 25 May, Italians will take part in the elections to the European Parliament for the eighth time in their history. The first time was in 1979. In those elections, which are now historic, Democrazia Cristiana won 36.45% of the votes, followed by the Italian Partito Comunista, which managed to win 29.57% of the votes. Today, many other political actors will compete for the 73 seats that are allocated to Italy in the European Parliament. The same number of seats as the United Kingdom, while only France and Germany hold greater parliamentary representation, with 74 and 96 seats respectively.
According to the classic definition proposed by Reif and Schmitt in the 1980s, electoral behaviour experts have considered the European elections as “second-order elections”. This definition is part of the idea that supranational elections are considered to be of less importance than other national elections, where voters and political actors find greater incentives to participate. However, the context of the economic crisis unleashed in 2008 and the importance of the measures taken by the European Union to manage it have approached Brussels’s policies to the ordinary life of Europeans in an unprecedented way.
Although it is too early to draw conclusions, this change in the perception of the EU’s policies might also change the current perception of the European elections, which are now regarded as distant elections from the national political life, where there is not much, or even nothing, at stake for the State members’ citizens. This perception might change especially in Southern European countries, where austerity measures intended to fight the effects of the crisis have hit hard and have been translated into a growing sense of disaffection toward European institutions.
This context of disaffection constitutes an interesting starting point to analyse the Italian case, imbued in the last years with a populist, personality-centred and Eurosceptic political climate, unprecedented in its history. The fact that the second and third parties in voting intention have integrated Euroscepticism in their discourse is indicative of the consolidation of an Eurosceptic climate in Italy. On the one hand, the increasing vote expectation of Beppe Grillo’s M5S for the May elections is largely based on its leader’s capacity to successfully adapt his populist rhetoric, insofar as a discourse directed against the political elite, the context of the European Union and its institutions. On the other hand, Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, although as an example of a declining party, has opted to fight against Grillo for the position of second party in Italy by strengthening the most critical side of its discourse against the European Union. Also note the important presence in the Italian political life of parties that directly demand Italy’s withdrawal from the Euro, such as Lega Nord or Fratelli d’Italia.
In light of this situation, most recent opinion polls show the increasing vote intention of Matteo Renzi’s Partito Democratico, which would win between 30% and 35% of the votes, according to the estimates. Renzi’s victory in his first election test as the President of the Italian Council of Ministers can be regarded as strong support for his reform agenda. But, putting aside the national dimension of the forthcoming elections, PD’s victory could imply a great success of pro-Europeanism in a social context that does not support the claim for a pro-European policy.
However, vote estimation results also allow, at the very least, a different reading. If we add the vote intention of the main parties that defend Euroscepticism together—M5S (22%-27%), FI (17%-21%), LN (4.5%-7%)—, PD’s victory could seem small in order to exercise a counterweight to Euroscepticism’s presence among the Italian representatives in the European Parliament. Thus, despite PD’s election victory, the defeat of Euroscepticism as a political phenomenon would not be so clear.