Post-election fears haunt Union

Date: 22/02/1996

By Ivo Ilic Gabara

IT has happened again - for the third time in less than two years, the EU presidency will be disrupted by national elections.

After much political wrangling and hope-against-hope attempts to avoid general elections before June, Italian President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro was forced last week to disband parliament and convene elections for 21 April.

Following Prime Minister-Designate Antonio Maccanico's failure to piece together a broad-based government, President Scalfaro had little choice but to convene the snap elections that almost everyone dreads.

Scalfaro dreads them because of the risk that they might lead to yet another deeply-fractioned hung parliament. Going to the polls under the same electoral rules as in March 1994, a combination of the first-past-the-post system and the old proportional representation, is almost certain to be inconclusive. Recent polls indicate that neither of the two main political blocs, the centre-left, grouped round the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS), and Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right bloc, is in a position to win an absolute majority. Berlusconi had hoped to avoid the elections coinciding with his judicial woes, PDS leader Massimo D'Alema fears them as his party is hardly poised to do justice to itself at the ballot box, and Europe dreads them because of the inevitable distraction from EU affairs that they will entail.

In the meantime, outgoing Prime Minister Lamberto Dini has been asked to stay in office until the elections, heading a caretaker administration with still undefined powers. Dini's resignation has never been formally accepted, yet, with the parliament dissolved, his authority is limited. His is the same government of non-elected technocrats which began Italy's presidency of the EU.

Italy will therefore be in no position to provide authoritative political leadership during the crucial launch of the Intergovernmental Conference next month in Turin. In all likelihood, a new government will not be formed before mid-May, leaving the new executive only enough time to wrap up the unfinished business of the presidency. By then, the new government will have less than 20 ministerial meetings left to chair out of the presidency's total of 58.

In carrying out its European duties, the caretaker government is bound by the guidelines adopted by the Italian parliament, ensuring continuity in the presidency's approach to Europe, at least until the elections.

But this may well change with the new legislature. The only political leader who currently stands to gain from the elections is Gianfranco Fini, leader of the ex-fascist Alleanza Nazionale (AN). Recent polls indicate that Fini could emerge as the real winner and claim leadership of the centre-right bloc from the incumbent Berlusconi.

Aware that his political image is still strongly linked to his fascist past, Fini is too shrewd to seek the premiership or a ministerial job in the future government. What he will do is position himself as the real powerbroker of the new legislature and effectively pull the strings of Italian political life, just as he has done during the current political crisis.

A new government formed under his aegis could hardly be expected not to give a different imprint to the presidency, in particular with regard to foreign policy and the pursuit of EMU.

A Fini-influenced government would stiffen the Italian position vis-à-vis Slovenia and Croatia over the restitution of Italian property in Istria. It would also strain Rome's relations with Bonn. Hard-line elements within the Alleanza Nazionale have repeatedly denounced German “hegemony” in European affairs and Bonn's “interference” with Italian internal affairs.

With regard to EMU, Fini has consistently labelled the Maastricht criteria as an “excessive price to pay”. His commitment not to raise taxes or to introduce cuts in the social security system, would probably lead him to slow down the redressing of the country's public finances, flying in the face of the convergence criteria. Fini would probably also exploit a free-floating lira with a more aggressive approach to foreign trade, causing further disturbances to the single market.

To stop such a drift to the right, the centre-left is jostling for an electoral coalition with Umberto Bossi's Northern League or the die-hard communists of Rifondazione Comunista. Three former prime ministers, Dini, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi and Giuliano Amato, along with Maccanico, may also add their weight to the centre-left. Any one of these electoral combinations would significantly reduce Fini's chances of success.