Europe’s Italian problem is bigger than Brexit

The new government finally taking shape in Italy is one of the weirdest coalitions you could imagine — and a pretty effective combination if your aim was to sabotage the European Union. Although predictions about where this Italian misadventure is heading are difficult, it could easily be worse than Brexit for the EU.

The coalition partners — the left-populist Five Star Movement led by Luigi Di Maio and the right-populist League led by Matteo Salvini — are poles apart in most respects, but come together over immigration, disdain for politics as usual and dislike of the EU.

With notable originality, the program they announced last week combines the high-spending ambitions of the left with the low-tax ambitions of the right. This implies a surge of public borrowing. The partners are undaunted by Italy’s current debt burden (130 percent of gross domestic product) and seem to be downright inspired by the EU’s rules on fiscal consolidation. Their program doesn’t just break those rules; it laughs at them…

he European Union didn’t get where it is today by bowing to popular doubts about its goals and methods. Europe’s peoples didn’t want the single currency. They got it anyway. Successive phases of political integration have encountered opposition — and have occasionally been rejected by referendum — but in due course were implemented regardless. The model throughout has been to do it, make it work, and the people will come around.

Even if the grandest ambitions of “ever closer union” have been shelved for the time being, that’s still the method — despite Brexit; despite Hungary and Poland; despite the rise of the National Front in France and the AfD in Germany; and now despite Italy. The EU has no other mode of operation.